


Bring It Back Home

by tysonrunningfox



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Kidfic, Maybe - Freeform, Snotstrid, and is the end of the story and that's the warning, baseball player snotlout au, drug mention, hiccstrid divorce, hiccstrid happened but now snotstrid is happening, i made it in paint and it's amazing, it just happens, snotlout is a little league coach, snotstrid endgame, the worst fanart you've ever seen, there is snotstrid smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-16
Updated: 2017-12-16
Packaged: 2019-02-15 09:42:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 35,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13028373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tysonrunningfox/pseuds/tysonrunningfox
Summary: Pending her divorce from Hiccup, Astrid returns to Berk with her daughter to recalibrate.  Snotlout is back home too after a stint in rehab and an exciting ending to his professional baseball career.  And when he does more than a good job coaching her daughter's baseball team, she realizes that they've both grown up in ways they didn't quite expect and that sometimes, being home involves the people more than the place.Also: most chapters include a very, very bad fanart done in paint by yours truly.





	1. Chapter 1

“Ayla!”  Snotlout feels as old as he ever has as he vaults himself over the park fence and runs towards the little blonde spitfire kicking the shit out of the little Ingerman boy. Bruce? Brent?  He doesn’t know, frankly, he doesn’t know any of these kids names but Ayla’s, because someday she’s going to be an Olympic softball player and he wants to be able to call her up and borrow money.  

He grabs the back of her baggy jersey and plucks her off of the other kid, tucking her under his arm because if he sets her down she’ll charge back into the fray.  

“You ok, kid?”  

“He’s a liar!”  Ayla shrieks, kicking him in the back of the knee with a surprising amount of force.  “He called my mommy a loser!”  

When Snotlout signed up to coach little league three days a week, he didn’t realize he’d be a mediator for a bunch of psychopathic six year olds.

“Her parents are getting divorced!”  B-something Ingerman stands up and pushes his glasses back up his nose.  “That’s losing at marriage.”  

Ayla growls like a tiny jungle cat, wiggling in his grip and pressing tiny hands against his stomach, trying to get free.  His elbow twinges, and he sets her down, behind him, grabbing her shoulder with a firm hand to keep her there.  

“Well you’re losing at not having a deathwish,” he frowns, because that didn’t make any sense, “I bet your parents are here, why don’t you go home and stop starting fights you can’t win.”  

The little brat looks like he’s about to cry and Snotlout frowns, letting go of Ayla and rubbing his hand over his face.  No one ever said he was good with kids.  Or people. Baseball, sure.  But not this.  

“That wasn’t very nice,” Ayla is frowning at him when he looks down, something creepily familiar about her close knit eyebrows and big green eyes.  There’s an exacting smatter of freckles across the bridge of her nose, perfect little brown dots like she drew them on.  “I like you.”  

He puffs out his chest. It’s been a while since he heard that.

But wait, no, he’s supposed to be an authority figure now, and he really needs this job even though it’s just volunteering.   He needs to get back into the sport and he needs all these parents recommendation that he’s a good guy and he’s clean now and that’s the only way he’s going to get to coach at least a high school team or something.  

He squats down in front of her, sighing and wringing his hands together.  

“I like you too, Ayla, I think you’re the best on the team.  No, I don’t think, I know, and you better remember me someday when you’re famous.”

That wrings a smile out of her usually serious expression and he presses onwards, “but you can’t keep picking fights like that, I know he’s a little twerp—ah sh—doody!  Ah doody, don’t tell him I called him a twerp, but…he’s your teammate now, so that means even if you don’t get along, you have to try and respect him.”  

She glowers at him, flicking her head to get overgrown blonde bangs out of her eyes, and something about the motion is again too familiar.  He doesn’t know her last name, he’ll have to actually look at that roster later, he must know her parents or something.  

“If you stop beating him up, I’ll buy you ice cream.”  

Her face lights up and she does an abortive little bounce, her toes never leaving the ground.  

Bribery works, he guesses.

He stands up, knees creaking like they never used to, and musses her hair, walking back over towards the park fence.  She falls in step beside him, jogging slightly to keep up.  She’s quieter than the other kids, more focused, and he scans the small parking lot for a car or a parent.  

“Is your mom here, kiddo?”

“Not yet, she said she’d be here at 4, what time is it?”  

He checks his watch and it’s only 3:40, “twenty minutes until four.”  

“Ok,” she sighs, looks at her shoes, “I’m gonna go swing then, I’ll see you next time Coach.”  

And ok, Snotlout doesn’t have the best track record, no one has ever really called him ‘nice’.  In fact, he’s well aware that for the last seven years he’s been nothing short of a massive dick.  

But he’s not a monster and he’s not going to leave a sad looking six year old to wait in the park by herself.  It feels too familiar, too much like history repeating itself.  

“I’ll push you.”  

“I can swing all by myself,” she crosses her arms, again, so familiar it makes his head ache.  

“I’m sure you can, but I bet I can push you higher.”  

“Alright,” she concedes, turning and running over to the playground.  

All in all, it’s not a bad way to spend 20 minutes.  Snotlout normally isn’t super into kids, he can’t swear around them, they’re hands are always wet and he can never tell why, and they always cry about something. But Ayla just laughs and lets him push her, telling him about her day at school.  She just moved here, it seems, because everything is ‘new’.  She’s got a new house and a new school and new friends, but seems very ok with the whole new situation.  

It’s 4:05 when an old Jeep Cherokee with chipped paint careens into the parking lot, a blonde woman flinging herself out of the front seat and running to the playground.  That feeling of familiarity multiplies and Snotlout stops pushing Ayla so suddenly that the little girl swings back and smacks him in the chest before jumping off and running to her mother.  

“How was practice? I’m so so sorry I’m late,” Astrid Hofferson hugs Ayla tightly and lifts her clear off of the ground, spinning in a circle before setting her back down.  

Astrid Hofferson, THE Astrid Hofferson.  

Well, Astrid Haddock, ever since she married his cousin.  

She looks at him finally, the same sense of startling realization flickering across her face before it’s replaced by rage.  

“I can see you’ve grown up a lot, Snotlout, what are you doing at the park playing with children you don’t know?  I thought you had a big baseball career to worry about but no, you’re still in Berk, perving on my daughter—”

“Astrid—”

“Mom!  He’s my coach, he said he’d buy me ice cream if I didn’t beat up Brent anymore.”  Ayla says seriously, struggling until her mother sets her down.  “He coaches my team.   He can hit the ball when it’s not even on a tee, I saw him!”  

“You’re her little league coach?”  Astrid raises an eyebrow and Snotlout can’t help but notice that she looks older too, tired, deep circles under her eyes like she hasn’t slept well in months. “They’re letting you coach children?”

“It’s great to see you too, Astrid, what’s it been, ten years?”  He rolls his eyes, “I’d say I’m qualified to coach little league.”  

“Last I heard you were in rehab.”  

“Mommy, what’s rehab?” Ayla tugs on her mother’s shirt and holy fuck, Ayla is Astrid’s daughter.  

She’s  _Hiccup’s_  daughter.  Hiccup is getting divorced.  His mind spins at all the new information.  

“You knew I was in rehab but neither you or my cousin bothered to tell me that you’re getting divorced? Or that you have a kid?”  

“Well, to be fair, my divorce didn’t make the national news.”  She glares at him for another second before laughing, an exhausted laugh, like this little bit of bickering let all of the air out of her.  “I’m sorry for thinking you were  _perving”_ she lowers her voice like Ayla didn’t just hear her say the same word, “on my daughter.  This is just…the exact last place I would ever expect to see you.”  

“Likewise,” he tucks his hands in his pockets and looks around.

Astrid starts answering Ayla’s onslaught of questions about rehab (a hospital for a special kind of sickness) and perving (when creepy strangers try to talk to you) and Snotlout couldn’t feel more out of place.  It strikes him that neither of them are supposed to be there, he’s supposed to be playing and she’s supposed to be in New York married to his cousin and…well, he doesn’t really know what she did there.  

All he knows is that he was playing when she moved and that he didn’t make a chance to say goodbye.  

“So, you moved back?”

She sighs and he recognizes the sound.  She’s been asked that question so many million times that the words don’t even sound like they mean anything anymore.  “Yep, staying with my uncle for a while, getting back on my feet.  You know how it is.”  

“Not exactly,” he looks at his feet and he doesn’t know why he’s saying this, doesn’t know why he’s telling her.  “I don’t know if uh…if Hiccup told you, but my dad’s sick.  We all told him to stop smoking twenty years ago but nope.”  

“You’re back here to take care of him?”  She cocks her head, looks shocked, and he remembers all at once why he doesn’t tell anyone.  

No one believes him. No one thinks brawny old Snotlout is capable of taking care of anyone other than himself.  

“Mommy, I’m hungry,” Ayla tugs on her mother’s shirt again and Astrid nods.  

“Right, I know your Uncle Finn is cooking, let’s get home.”  She grabs her daughter’s hand and waves at Snotlout with her other hand, a bit awkward, a little less confident than he’s ever seen her.  “Well, I’ll see you Thursday, and I won’t be late next time, I promise.”  

“Yeah, see you,” he waves her off, struck with the odd feeling that he’s seen a ghost.  

Either he’s seen a ghost or he is a ghost.  


	2. Chapter 2

Starting over doesn’t feel like starting over, it feels like losing something.  Astrid feels like she’s twenty again, back in Berk, determined but directionless, only this time her daughter is with her, staring at her with those big green eyes that make her feel like she’s forgotten something. She was always a fighter, as a kid, she was never subtle, all problems she came across were dealt with absolutely with no care for her own volume.  

She never assumed she’d be one to have a quiet divorce.  

Explaining it to Ayla was the hardest part, because there was nothing to explain.  And she held on for so long telling herself that there was nothing  _wrong_  with her marriage, they rarely fought, they could afford all the bills and more, they took a family vacation once a year and there were smiling pictures on the walls of their comfortable apartment.  But nothing was really right with it either.  

‘I vow to love you no matter who you become’ doesn’t factor into many people’s wedding vows, but maybe it should.  She didn’t understand at twenty how much people can change, how much little, endearingly annoying ticks in someone’s personality can grow to consume them and overshadow the solid traits that she loved so much in the beginning.  

Hiccup worked long hours, long weeks, long months.  He never said no to a business trip.  He missed Ayla’s Christmas recital and tried to make up for it by taking them all out to a fancy dinner.  In the middle of dinner he got a call and answered it in the middle of Astrid’s sentence, and that’s when she noticed he hadn’t been listening in the first place.

She found herself missing him even when he was right in front of her, even when he was talking, but…but well, she was missing someone that didn’t exist anymore.  She was missing a scruffy college age idealist in a too big shirt, trying to grow the mangy stubble on his chin into a beard.  She was missing the way he used to open when he looked at her, all pretenses in his expression falling away, like she and she alone was his safe space.  

She didn’t really like smooth, executive Hiccup Haddock.  He was a bit pretentious, he was full of himself, he made important decisions without asking one and only seemed to take credit when they were right.

He was self-made, self-propelled, and self-centered.  

It’s not that she stopped loving him, she just stopped wanting to be around him.  

“We could get more, you know,” Tuffnut Thorston, looking so unlike he used to with his slicked back ponytail and slim cut brown suit.  She remembers when he caught a suit on fire for art in the high school parking lot and someone called the police on him.  “You’re not asking for much here, it wouldn’t be hard to get you half the assets at  _least_.”

“God, it’s like you grew up and became The Man,” Astrid laughs, pulling the document towards her and signing it easily.  “I don’t want his assets.  I don’t even really need child support, but it makes it easier for him to keep parental rights.”  

“When you said you were getting divorced, I thought this might be fun,” Tuffnut pouts, taking the fully signed documents back and putting them in an official looking manila envelope.  “Can I at least hire a really big scary guy to serve him?”  

“What did he do to piss you off?”  She asks, because she’s genuinely shocked that Berk has been so accepting of the slightly less shiny half of their golden couple.

“Mostly I just like messing with people,” he smiles at her, a soft smile he shouldn’t be able to make. “And no one asking for this little was ever the one to fuck up a marriage.  I’ve been around the messy divorce block a few times, and the people in the right never want anything but ‘out’.”

“Thanks, Tuff.” She stands, checks her phone.  There’s a picture from her Uncle, Ayla asleep on the couch, grass stained knees bright green against the old floral upholstery. The message beneath it reads:  _Don’t hurry home, I think we’re bonding._

She thinks about asking Tuff to go get a drink or something, because she’s an adult that gets to do things like that.  It’s equal parts funny and depressing that she’s getting more help with Ayla now that she did when she wasn’t technically a single parent.  She already took the afternoon off for her last legal consult, might as well make the best of it.  

But before she can get the words out, she thinks of someone else.  She’s been thinking about Snotlout a little too much since she ran into him at the park, guilt for her initial judgment of him turning into curiosity.  

“It’s no problem, Astrid, you know who to call if you ever get hit by a car or something.”  

She almost leaves, but stops herself, “hey, by the way, do you have Snotlout’s number?”  

“Yeah, why?”  He pulls out his phone, a Walmart flip phone that makes him look like a drug dealer.  It’s comforting, in a way, that things can’t change too much, not really. “Need some performance enhancement?” He snickers but seems to catch himself. “Wait, never mind, his dad’s dying, those jokes aren’t funny anymore.  But man, they had a heyday, wish you could have been here.”  

She texts Snotlout in the parking lot,  _Want to get a drink?  I should apologize for calling you a perv._

She’s not really expecting an answer, it’s not like she thinks they’ll be best friends now just because they went to high school together and happened to wash back up in their home town at the same time, but he texts back almost immediately.  

_Sure, now?  It’s happy hour at Applebee’s_

_That works, I’ll head over there_

Even though the rest of the town hasn’t changed in the last decade, the Applebee’s is ridiculously updated, all faux modern inside.  Astrid orders a margarita, because she can, because they’re cheap and no one is judging her based on her choice of alcohol.  Hiccup got really into craft beer, near the end, if it wasn’t an IPA he wouldn’t go near it.  He brought his own six pack to the last playdate he took Ayla too, completely unaware of the line between introducing someone to something new and being energetically pretentious.  

Snotlout shows up a few seconds after her, looking around the restaurant for a moment before he spots her.  He looks better than she would have thought, not that she thought about it, but aren’t people supposed to come out of rehab skinny and pale?  His hair is shorter than it was in high school, a few gray strands peeking out from under his dirty baseball cap and he has a scar on the inside of his elbow that stands out bright white against the comparatively tan skin of his arm.  

He slides into the booth across from her and rests his elbows on the table, flipping idly through the menu.  It’s awkward, all of a sudden, and she can tell he thinks it’s awkward too.  He clears his throat.

“Where’s the kiddo?”  

“With my uncle.  He picks her up from school because I usually can’t get off work that early.”  

“Where are you working?” He waves the waiter down and orders a beer.  Coors light. It makes her smile even though it shouldn’t.  

“Heading up the advertising department for Johan’s Organic  Popsicles, he wants to take the brand nationwide and I have some experience. Theoretically, I’ll get commission, eventually, but I’ve only been there a couple of weeks.”  

“Fancy Astrid with the fancy job,” he snorts, accepting his beer and sipping the thin layer of foam off of the top.  

“What does that mean? We can’t all volunteer our specific expertise to coaching kindergarten sports.”  She rolls her eyes and it feels like old times.  She and Snotlout could always joke with each other, even if it weren’t always friendly or polite.  Their relationship—not quite a friendship and not quite enemies—was never fragile.  She used to hate the fact that no matter what she said she could never truly piss him off, but now it’s sort of comforting.  

“Hey, even I wasn’t reckless enough to spend all my money, it was quite a bit of money,” he grins, smarmy, full of himself.  “And I’m still getting a partial contract pay out, they bought me for three more years than my elbow lasted so…”

“I read something about that too, what’d you do to it?” She looks at the scar, obviously surgical and obviously not superficial.  

“Just Tommy John surgery,” he rolls his eyes, flexes his arm, “it never really healed right, I think my physical therapist was a bit of a quack.  He kept telling me to wait and my doctor was telling me to up my physical therapy.  You can guess what I did.”  

“Hmm, professional athlete who couldn’t play, bet you went on vacation and didn’t practice at all ever.”

That wins a laugh and he shrugs, “it started hurting again when I was practicing at a limited capacity. And well, the rest is history and put me on the list of ‘top ten athletes most likely to be the next A-Rod’.”

“S-Jorg, Snot-J, your name just doesn’t shorten as well, does it?”  Astrid laughs even though it’s not funny.  “Do you start all conversations with people you haven’t seen in a while like this?”

“It always comes up right away,” he shrugs, the booth squeaking.  He moves loudly, like he always did, she remembers the way Hiccup used to roll his eyes when he heard Snotlout coming down the hall, surrounded by his posse.  “It’s funny because no one remembers my record breaking rookie season or the fact I only spent a year on a farm team, no, it’s all that I tested positive for something when I wasn’t even playing anymore.”  

He stops suddenly, like he’s said too much, and it occurs to her that he probably doesn’t have anyone to talk to, what with Tuffnut engineering the pity train and everyone else still joking about him.  She always felt kind of bad for him, to be completely honest, when they were kids and he was always sort of the ass end of Hiccup’s jokes.  It was easy, it was cathartic, for Hiccup, she could tell.  A way to get over feeling small all the time.

To be completely honest though, if she’d stood up for Snotlout, maybe Hiccup would have remembered that she wasn’t small either.  

“I used to be kind of jealous, you know, that your baseball career took off and my basketball didn’t.”

They both pause to take a drink, simultaneously, like they both need a break from the obnoxious, emotional conversation.  She wonders if losing a career is like losing a marriage.  Everyone pointing fingers, everyone assuming.   Stereotypes of the bitchy, nagging wife and the cranky athlete on steroids take the front row in any audience.  

“Because I was good. Like, good good.”  

“Yeah, if you were playing someone might have actually watched the WNBA.”  He snickers, “I mean, maybe.  I still wouldn’t have.”  

She kicks him under the table.  Hard.  

“Jesus, I see where your daughter gets it.”  He tries to kick her back but she dodges and he just kicks the booth.  Her drink sloshes slightly and she picks it up, taking a big swig.

“Hey, don’t waste my drink.”

They laugh a little too hard about the whole exchange, and it strikes Astrid that it’s the first time she’s really  _laughed_  in a while.  She and Hiccup stopped laughing, near the end, stopped joking.  It’s like they were on different wavelengths, she was tired of constantly keeping up with his witticisms and he seemed to forget their years old language of elbow jabs and punches in the arm.  

“How long are you back in town, do you think?”  He asks after a moment, spinning his beer glass between his fingers.  She can see that the hand on the same side as his scar is slightly thinner than the other, less muscled.  Withered.  

“I don’t know really. Right now it’s just nice to be home, this place hasn’t changed a bit.”  

“What are you talking about?”  He gestures around the restaurant, “Applebee’s got remodeled last year.”  

“Yeah, and they haven’t replaced the street lights on main street since 1986.”  

He laughs, “I know what you mean.  It’s like you can just delete a few years and try again.”  

“Yeah,” she looks at her ring finger, the still pale strip of skin.  She wore the same ring for ten years of marriage, but Hiccup upgraded every few years.  First tungsten then onyx.  She always thought it was weird, like…how could he commit to a marriage if he couldn’t commit to a piece of jewelry, but she never said that out loud.  Hiccup just liked flash, he liked new, he liked constant motion.  

Astrid can’t help but think it’d be nice to stay still for a while.  


	3. Chapter 3

Snotlout lets the kids name the little league team and regrets it immediately.  Ayla’s determination and influence is how he finds himself wearing a bright pink tee-shirt that says ‘Berk Ballerinas’ to their first game.  To be fair, eleven little boys between the age of six and eight are wearing the same thing, because Ayla is quite the negotiator, but it’s still not his best Saturday morning on record.  

It’s the first game of the season, after two weeks of practices and Snotlout feels more than a little stupid scanning the stands for Astrid, the way he used to do in high school. Sometimes it was to impress her, sometimes it was to piss her off, but some part of him always thought she was a good luck charm.  She’s in the third row of the ramshackle bleachers, sitting with her uncle and waving to Ayla.  

Ayla’s great uncle picked her up most of the time, but the time Astrid did they chatted for a while while Ayla played with a couple of kids still waiting.  Mostly about work and the weather and traffic, but still, it was…nice. He hesitates to say nice, because it’s such a small word for something that feels so big.  He texted her a picture that morning, of his Berk Ballerina tee-shirt and it was kind of like having a friend again.  

Not a teammate, not an agent or a coach, but a  _friend_. She doesn’t want anything from him, she doesn’t seem to judge him or see him as a waste.  She doesn’t pity him.  She treats him like he’s not fragile, like she’s not going to say the wrong thing and send him back to the needle.  

The game starts at 9:00am sharp, a referee calling all the kids in for high fives and a lecture about being sportsmanlike.  It’s kind of cute, to be honest, all their solemn little faces as they walk back to the benches serving as their dugouts.  Ayla is up to bat first, for intimidation purposes, and she hits her first ball dead on, running to second base and giving her mom a thumbs up.  Her helmet is too big, falling forward over her forehead and Astrid is snapping pictures from the bleachers, chatting with her uncle and looking younger than she did a week ago.  

It’s a little league game, so Snotlout doesn’t really know what he was expecting, but it’s over quick, the innings going quickly with plenty of strikes and walks.  He guesses he remembers little league differently, already hunching under the pressure of winning.  He doesn’t remember losing, but he doesn’t remember having much fun either.

The Berk Ballerinas win 11 to 8 and one of the kids’ moms comes onto the field with a tray of orange slices as the bleachers clear.  The good news is, no one on the other team is crying, and the better news is Snotlout’s team is cheering around the tray of oranges, waving them above their heads and high fiving each other.  

It’s not like ‘my little league team won’ would impress his father much, but hey, it’s something.  

Astrid walks over and stands beside him, resting her arm on the top of his head like she knows he hates. He knocks it off and stretches his own onto her shoulder, leaning on her until she steps away.  They’re acting like children.  They’re both smiling.  

“Good game, coach.”  

“I should thank you for my star player, how many times did she score?”  

“Five or six,  I’m not sure whether they counted the one where her helmet fell off or not.”  Astrid waves until Ayla sees her and runs over, leaping into her mother’s arms with full faith she’ll be caught.  “Great game, honey!”  

“I scored six.”  She turns to Snotlout, frowning that distinctive frown, “and I didn’t punch Brent even when he almost tripped me, does that mean I get ice cream now?”  

Astrid rolls her eyes, “she won’t stop asking me when you’re buying her ice cream.  You shouldn’t make kids promises you don’t intend to keep.”

“Who said I wasn’t going to keep it?”

Ayla’s eyes light up and she looks at her mom hopefully as Astrid sets her down.  “Please, mommy?”  

“Well…” Astrid pretends to deliberate, tapping her foot, “you did just win your first game…I guess that’s an occasion for ice cream.   Can you go get your uncle and ask him if he wants to come?”  

“Hey, I promised one kid ice cream, do I look like I’m made of money to you?”  He jokes and Astrid rolls her eyes.  

“Yeah, you kind of do, your arms are just big dollar signs and your face looks like it’s on a quarter.”

Snotlout kisses his bicep, his good one, and Astrid shoves him before stepping back to introduce him to her Uncle.  They’ve met before, of course, in passing, because Berk isn’t a very big town, but it feels official to shake the man’s hand and set off down Main street.  

“I’ve got to say, your rookie season was really impressive.  I don’t think anyone expected you to step onto the field with that kind of arm,” Finn falls into step beside him as Astrid and Ayla walk ahead, going over the game.  “To be honest, I won about five hundred off of Gobber because he didn’t think you could do it.”  

“Well, Gobber’s a great guy but he has a soft spot for the Haddock side of the family, I’m glad someone exploited it,” Snotlout laughs and Finn laughs with him.  That little coil of armor unfurls in his chest, ready to retort when the scandal gets brought up, like it always is. He doesn’t like talking sports anymore, not really, but at the same time he misses it keenly.  It was such a massive part of his life for so long that now that it’s forbidden it feels like he’s missing a body part.  

“Your game against in Houston?  I think that’s the closest a rookie has ever come to pitching a no-hitter, and you hit two home runs?”  Finn laughs, “I don’t mean to put you on the spot, son, I know you’re trying to catch up with Astrid and I’m intruding—”

His brain sticks on the “son” and he swallows hard.  

“No, not at all.  No one really wants to talk baseball around m—around here.”  He barely catches himself, clearing his throat.  “So you’re a Rockies guy, or…”

They chat pleasantly the whole way to the ice cream shop where they order four cones and get a shaded table on the sidewalk.  Ayla sits next to Snotlout and across from her mother, swinging her legs that are a little too short and licking at her strawberry ice cream.  

“Thank Mr. Moneybags here for the ice cream,” Astrid reminds her.  

“Thanks Coach Moneybags.”

Snotlout ruffles her hair and snorts, “Thanks, Astrid, that’s going to catch on, you know that, right?”  

“I have a six year old, of course I know it’s going to catch on.”  

It’s more comfortable than it should be, people-watching and chatting about nothing.  Finn talks baseball a little more, mostly technique things, apparently he played in high school but never went further because he took over his father’s carpentry business.  He seems to regret it, and Snotlout sees so much of Astrid in him, that duty bound self-sacrifice.  He can see how that would wear a person down and when his phone rings and he sees it’s his dad, he thinks that maybe he knows what it feels like.  

“Hold on, let me get this,” he holds the phone to his ear, “yeah dad?”  

“My chemo is in half an hour, did you forget or something?”  

“No, I didn’t forget—”

“Oh, you just have something better to do?”  

If he were Hiccup he’d say something snarky.  But he’s not. “On my way, Dad.”

He sighs and stands as he hangs up, “I’ve got to head out, I almost forgot my dad has a doctor’s appointment this afternoon.”  He wants to roll his eyes, like it’s a drag, like he always used to but it feels wrong so he waves an awkward little wave, “I’ll see you around, especially you, Ayla, keep working on that swing.”  

“Got it Coach Moneybags,” Ayla sing-songs and Astrid laughs, waving back at him.  

“See you around.”  

The biggest thing he noticed was after high school, when he didn’t see friends every day, they all drifted apart.  That’s why he didn’t talk to Astrid, that’s why he hadn’t seen her since her wedding, where he only was because he’s Hiccup’s cousin.  

He doesn’t want that to happen again.  He doesn’t know what he wants, besides not messing up anymore, but he knows he wants Astrid to be his friend like she never quite was when he was younger and infatuated or younger and jealous.  

“I’ll text you, we should hang out this week.  Or something.   I don’t know.”  

“Sounds good,” she laughs, “maybe you can invite me over and we’ll catalogue all the pink clothing in your closet.”  

“Oh shut up, your daughter picked it out,” he can feel himself blushing as he turns around and finally leaves, squelching the oddly overwhelming urge to look back over his shoulder.  


	4. Chapter 4

Astrid leans on the kitchen counter, watching Ayla get in her friend’s parent’s van outside.  She remembers being sixteen in this kitchen and now she’s sending her daughter to her first sleepover.  And she’s texting Snotlout Jorgenson hoping to hang out.  

Sometimes absolutely nothing goes according to plan.  

Astrid:  _What’s your night look like?_

Snotlout:  _My dad needs a ride to some specialist in Portland._

Astrid:  _You don’t sound so thrilled._

Snotlout: _An hour long car ride alone with my dad._

Snotlout: _So funn._   

Snotlout:  _*fun._   

Initially she was surprised that Snotlout is someone who corrects his text message typos, but it makes an odd sort of sense.  He’s a guy trying to fix a lot.  

Astrid: _I could come_.  

He sends her a kissy emoticon.  She rolls her eyes.  God, ten years ago she would have slugged him for that.  Maybe she still should.  

Snotlout:  _if you want._

Snotlout: _I’m just going to be hanging out, probably too exciting for you._

Snotlout: _I don’t know if you can handle it._

Astrid: _You’re an idiot, I’m on my way_.

That’s how she ends up in the backseat of Spitelout’s old truck, leaning forward slightly, her chin resting on the driver’s seat above Snotlout’s shoulder.  

“I’m sure I could live without one lung,” Spitelout takes the oxygen mask off of his face to talk, his voice wheezy in a way it didn’t used to be.  “Surgeons these days are cowards, back in my day we’d just cut off what wasn’t working right.”  He coughs, replaces his oxygen and breathes deeply.  

Astrid can see Snotlout rolling his eyes in the rear view mirror, his grip on the old, wide steering wheel tightening.  

“Dad, I’m pretty sure even you need your lungs.”  

“I’m not saying take both of them, just the worse one.”  Spitelout shakes his head, “maybe you shoulda been a doctor, with talk like that.”  

“Only you could make that into an insult, Spitelout.”  Astrid’s mouth moves without her express permission and she doesn’t really realize she was sort of defending Snotlout until he snorts, his shoulders relaxing slightly into the seat.  

“See? Someone recognizes my talents,” Spitelout laughs, apparently still oblivious to sarcasm. “Are you going to hold Snotlout’s hand in the hospital, Astrid?  He doesn’t like the place, gets all scared like a baby bunny.”  He guffaws at that, coughing into his mask and fogging it up further.  

Snotlout’s foot twitches on the gas and the old truck lunges forward, sounding angry instead of its previous mild discontentment with highway speeds.  

“He’s twitchy just thinking about it.”  

“I don’t like hospitals much myself,” Astrid lies.  “Too sanitary, they always smell like death.”  

“Remind me to tell Finn to toughen you up.”  The difference in tone is startling.  When Spitelout was talking about Snotlout it was stern.  Unforgiving.  Disappointed. Talking to Astrid though?  Nearly flirtatious.  It makes her stomach churn and she sits back in her seat, kicking her foot up onto the center console and poking Snotlout’s arm with her toe.  

He seems to take the comfort for a second before shoving at her foot, “shoes off the upholstery, this thing is  _classic_.”  

There’s a male nurse waiting in the lobby of the hospital with a wheelchair and Spitelout immediately starts bitching about gender roles and how at home, a pretty young thing comes to get him.  Snotlout visibly relaxes as soon as his father is wheeled away into the examination room and after reaffirming his phone number with the receptionist, they walk back to the truck.  It smells like sickness, not the clean hospital sickness but pathetic, leaking sickness.  It’s the smell of a man who’s dying but refuses to admit it.  

“Who likes hospitals?” Snotlout starts the truck with entirely too much force, punching the shifter into reverse.  “I don’t think anyone wakes up in the morning and says ‘wow, I’d love to go to the hospital today’.”

“Doctors do.”  

“Well, we both know there are plenty of reasons I’m not a doctor.”  As he says it, his voice dips slightly, self-conscious.  She remembers how many dumb jokes she herself used to tell about him.  Hiccup was the worst offender, of course, still drowning in his own insecurities and using Snotlout’s to climb out, but she joined in plenty.  

None of it’s true.  If she had known he was getting the same shit at home she never would have done it.  

Or she probably would have, because she was young and stubborn and callus.  

“And it’s really too bad, because my ass looks  _fine_  in scrubs.”  

Astrid laughs, “how do you know this?”  

“Roleplay,” he shrugs, cocky, “you women are greedy, you know. Being an MLB Rookie of the Year nominee isn’t enough for some of you, you want a doctor in the bedroom.”  

“Was she the naughty nurse?” She snorts, “I swear, you are literally the most predictable human on the planet.”  

“Yeah, because it’s really easy to assume I’m going to be awesome all the time, which, guess what, I am.” He exhales, and she realizes all of a sudden that this was a pep-talk and she wonders how much of his younger annoying mannerisms were just coping.  

If no one else was going to tell him that he was awesome, he had to do it himself.  

“What do you want to do, we’ve probably got about three hours to kill and then they’ll call me and tell me if they’re keeping him overnight.”  

“How often do you do this?”

“Too often,” he shakes his head, adjusts his hat.  “And for the record, I’m not a coward for hating hospitals.  I think anyone that was kept in one for six weeks would hate them. It’s normal.”  

“I didn’t say that it wasn’t, Mr. Defensive.”  She kicks her feet up on the dash, he reaches over and knocks them down.  

“What part of  _classic_  don’t you understand?”  

“The part where literally every time you say  _classic_  it gets funnier.”  She bites her lip, “so…six weeks, huh?”  

“Pretty standard rehab time. I could have left in five, but I’d already paid for the room.”  He turns onto a smaller side street, “there’s a brewery down here I hang out at sometimes.”

“You know, if you wanted to talk to me about the hospital, you could.”  

He looks at her out of the corner of his eye, like she won’t know he’s assessing her, “right, because I’m a real talker, Astrid.”  

“I didn’t say you were a talker, I said you could talk if you wanted to.”  

“Or we could just get a beer like normal people,” he parks and jumps out of the truck, stalking ahead of her.  

They sit at a shady outside table and Snotlout stares at his hands for a long moment, “they watched me shower.”  

“What?”  

“Do you know how humiliating that is?”  He doesn’t look at her, his voice soft and tentative, like he doesn’t really trust the words to make it across the table to her.  “It’s like being less than human.  They tell you to cope but don’t tell you how.  They make you sit in front of all these people who, you know, are fucked up, and it just reminds you how fucked up you are.”  

“At least it helped.”

“I could have done it myself,” his lip curls, “I’m not—I knew it was bad and dumb, alright?  I’m not as stupid as people seem to think I am. I just—I didn’t want my career to end like that.  An injury and then…nothing.”

She can hear Hiccup in the back of her head like a ghost:  _So, you went for a massive drug scandal.  What did you just say about being stupid?_

“I get it.”  She looks around, like she’s going to see someone she knows coming up the street.  She guesses that’s something she and Snotlout have always had in common, on some base level. Both of them have a front, a meticulously maintained front that they don’t like the idea of shedding.  “Look, you think I take divorce lightly?  I tried everything I could think of to fix it. I’m not proud of some of it.”  

“Normally I’d be all over this but I really don’t need to hear about your and my cousin’s kinky sad sex life.”  

“Ha ha, you’re hilarious,” she clears her throat, takes a sip of her beer.  “It was worse than that.  I was…docile.  Quiet. Accepting.  He’s everyone’s boss and I thought about letting him be mine. Because…well, what did I have to complain about?  I thought I should shut up and be thankful.”  

“I can’t imagine you being quiet,” he snorts, “but that’s something I’d pay to see.”  

His foot nudges hers under the table, saying what he can’t.  It says ‘sorry my cousin was a dick’ and ‘sorry you’re hurting’ and ‘I won’t make fun of you for this later’.  She leans across the table and punches him in the shoulder.  

“And just so you know, the papers had it all wrong.  It wasn’t just some old guy trying to play with the young kids, it was _fun._   There was all sorts of fun drugs and trashed hotel rooms, so…when I mess up, I do it right, I know how to party.”  

Astrid rolls her eyes and kicks his foot under the table.  Not hard.  Just…because she should.  It’s sad and she can tell he’s sad, that he’s grasping for straws of victory in his biggest loss, and it’s not easy like it is for her.  She has Ayla, he has a few chemically warped memories of parties.  

“And they let you be around children.”  

“Don’t worry, my don’t do drugs speech is great.”  He drains his beer, “and your kid loves me so…”

“It does make me wonder.”

“How you could be so dumb and pass me over?”  His smarmiest smile is rusty, not the perfectly curated ‘babe magnet’ of his high school days.

“No, how she could be related to me.”  

He laughs like he never used to when he was the butt of a joke and stands up, “I’m getting another, do you want one?”  

“Might as well.”  

All in all…it’s a pretty alright way to spend an afternoon.  


	5. Chapter 5

Snotlout has a collection of tabloids he made the cover of. He doesn’t know why he keeps them, but that box was one of the few he moved from his apartment back to his father’s basement.  His favorites are the earlier ones, the ones that suspected him of making out with some actress because of some grainy photo.  One time, they thought it was Kate Hudson and they published his photo next to Derek Jeter’s, framing some ridiculous love triangle that was frankly steroids straight to his ego. 

There are so many pictures. Pictures of him at the beach, acting like he was a normal human.  Celebrations of his birthday, the famous people who were invited.  

Then there’s the last few, the blurry pictures of him at parties, the ones where he’s got a dollar rolled up and he’s leaning over a table covered in blurred out white lines, only obscured by his baseball cap.  The ones talking about him recovering from his surgery, the ones with pictures of the back of his head, at a beach he can’t really remember, looking skinny in that gaunt, addicted way.  

They said he looked good and he remembers feeding off of it.  Headlines like ‘Snotlout Jorgenson keeping fit while recovering from elbow surgery’, listed under his name on google searches made him feel like it was ok. Like it was good even.  

It wasn’t until his piss test came up negative that he realized it was bad, that it was destructive and disastrous and that he’d have to deal with it for years and years to come.

But now?  Now the magazines are like a toxic relic that he feels like throwing away all the time.  He feels like burning them, all of them, like investigating every hair salon and nail parlor in the area and throwing away all their archives.

He’s staring at the box of them, wondering whether to throw them away or to frame them when Astrid texts him.  It’s still bizarre, the usual communication.  She’s supposed to hate him, but she doesn’t, she kind of likes him and he can’t help but say he hasn’t had as good of a friend in years.  

Astrid: Do you know anything about refrigerators?

Snotlout: I know they keep things cold  
Snotlout: Why?  Did you need basic instructions on how to use a refrigerator?

Astrid: No, I know how to use one, mine is just broken

Snotlout: in what way?

Astrid: In that it’s supposed to keep food cold but it’s not anymore

Snotlout: is everything that’s supposed to be connected connected?  

Astrid: I can’t even move it away from the wall.

Snotlout: Even if I couldn’t fix it, I could move it

Astrid: That’s why I texted you  
Astrid: Will you please come help move my refrigerator and I’m not asking again because I know you’ll like it too much.  

Snotlout: Gimme 15, I’ll be over

Astrid: Thanks

It’s a distraction from staring at his closet, a happy distraction, to be honest, because Ayla is hilarious and Astrid is well…she’s Astrid.  She’s still Astrid, ten married years later.  He knows that he should probably be taking family’s side in a divorce or something but to be honest, Hiccup never felt like family.  Their dads were always so competitive and it passed onto them.  And then Hiccup was always so witty and hard-working and he spent all his spare time at the batting cages and they were never close.  He knows, rationally, that Hiccup is his cousin but he feels closer to Astrid.  Always has.

Actually, he and Astrid stopped talking—bickering, it was always bickering—when she got married. Before that they’d run into each other around town and grip at each other for a while but it was always a positive thing, it was stable.  He could always trust Astrid to be there ready to bitch at him or try to kick his ass. He doesn’t know how she had a kid without him knowing, he hates that he was that far  _away_.  

He never really wanted to leave Berk, not the way Hiccup did, he just wanted to play.  He wanted to play and he wanted his dad to leave him alone and maybe stretch so far as to be proud of him, and none of those things could happen in Berk.  The thing about being a hometown hero is that it doesn’t translate once a person moves, and then well…the world can seem a bit lonely and wild.  It was easy not to regret things when no one he knew saw, when everyone around him was doing worse.  

No matter the circumstances, it’s kind of good to be home.  

He pulls up in Astrid’s driveway and parks and she has the door open before he makes it up the walk. She’s wearing old shorts and a tee shirt and there’s a smudge of dirt on her face like she’s been cleaning and it strikes him as almost  _cute_. If it were another girl it would be cute.  

“Thanks so much,” she closes the door behind him, calling Ayla to come say hello.  “I didn’t realize my uncle had such a social life, I swear, he’s at some new carpentry convention every weekend.”  

Ayla comes bounding down the hallway and basically flings herself at his leg, hitting him like a little, loveable juggernaut.  

“Hey kiddo.”  

“Hi coach, do you want to see my room?”  

“Maybe not right now, hun,” Astrid ruffles her daughter’s hair, “he’s here to help me with something before he can play with you.”  

“Ok,” Ayla pouts, trudging back down the hallway, “I’ll just stay in my room then.”  

“I told her to stay in there while I vacuumed and she’s not letting me live it down,” Astrid rolls her eyes, looking way more exhausted than she ever used to.  “Apparently I’m the meanest mom in the world.”  

The refrigerator is shifted a few inches from the wall but unevenly and she gestures towards it, “Have at it. I cleared everything out of it that I could but it’s still heavy.”  

“I doubt it’s that heavy,” he walks over to it and tries to grip it, “it’s just awkward, not heavy.”

“Yeah, not heavy at all, that’s why you haven’t picked it up,” she leans back against the counter, arms crossed.  “I didn’t ask you to do it all yourself, you know, I could help.”  

“I got it,” he bends down, lifting with his knees and ignoring the pressure in his elbow as it complains about the weight.  He lifts the fridge, moves it back about three feet and sets it down with a louder thunk than he’d like.  “No problem, see?”  

He rubs his arm, she narrows her eyes at him like she sees it but isn’t going to bring it up.  

“Thanks.”  She grabs a screw driver from the counter and steps behind the fridge, kneeling down behind it.  “Can you hand me that wire on the counter?”  

He holds it out to her along with the wire cutters next to it, “I see how it is, you just needed someone to hand you tools.”  

“You seem to be managing fine,” she scoffs, measuring the wire against something.  “I was right, I thought it might be a frayed wire, the dishwasher rocks against it and if something was caught it’d get destroyed.”

“So you’re replacing the wire?”  He’s the first to admit he doesn’t know much about fixing stuff.  He’s had the money to just go buy a new one for a while and if anything ever broke when he was a kid, his dad would pay Hiccup to fix it.

“Yup, can’t quite afford a new fridge right now,” she clips a section of wire and holds it in her teeth, pointing to a box of little blue, red, and yellow cylinders on the counter. “Hand me those connectors?”  

He hands her the box and she reaches out again, “and the crimper.”  

“So needy.”  

She ignores that, making quick work of stripping both ends of the wire and connecting it into place on the back of the fridge.  She sticks it down with duct tape, covering it with a long strip like protection and walking around to turn the fridge back on.  Cool air pours out with a grudging hum and she wipes dirty hands on her shorts, looking pleased with herself.  

“If you put it back, I bet I have a slightly cooler than lukewarm beer to thank you with.”  

“I feel like you’ve wasted my talents, Astrid.”  He grunts, lifting the fridge and scooting it back into place.  He dusts his hands on his jeans and feels a little jealous, because Astrid somehow got the sexy dirty look while he didn’t and he’s got that awkward bro-competition feeling like she looks  _better_  than him.  

Except in the past few weeks he’s somehow gotten closer to her than he’s ever been to a bro and he hangs out with her kid and stuff and…he doesn’t know what to say or how to act, his hands suddenly clammy.  

“Or maybe I just embraced mine,” she pulls two slightly lukewarm beers out of the fridge and hands one to him, mockingly knocking them together.  “Cheers.”  


	6. Chapter 6

Astrid’s phone usually doesn’t wake her up.  She likes it on the desk across the room because everyone deserves eight hours a day when they’re unreachable.  But for some reason, Friday morning it  _does_. Just a single buzz, an email, probably some promotional from some store she gave too much information to, but the sound of plastic rattling against the desk is oddly ominous.  

It’s an e-mail from Hiccup. Well, not really an e-mail from Hiccup, a reminder from his office, cancelling the lunch they had planned for today.  No message, no personal touch just:

“ _Mr. Haddock will not be able to make it to your previously agreed upon lunch meeting at_ Bistro on 6th _please contact the number below to reschedule your appointment._

_Signed by the office of Hiccup Haddock”_

There’s a string of phone numbers and e-mails under the form letter and Astrid feels like she’s going to be sick.  She knows all those phone numbers, was there in the store when they got their first phone plan as adults and felt like they could do it, like they could move across the country and grow up.  But now she’s supposed to get in contact with him like everyone else, from a list of information sent to her by his secretary.  

She exits out of the e-mail and sees the date.  

Oh.  Right.  

It’s a normal day but it isn’t, it’s missing something, it’s lonely, it makes her think about things she’d been so good about pushing down.  It makes her want to talk to someone, makes her wish that Hiccup hadn’t been her best friend until he wasn’t.  

Around lunch, her uncle tells her he’s having some friends over and something snaps.  She can’t do it.  Can’t have social hour, can’t sit there and smile.  It’s hard enough to do it for her daughter.  

Astrid:  _What are you doing tonight?_

Snotlout:  _Killin’ it_

Snotlout:  _Or was that an actual question?_

Astrid smiles and it feels like her face is cracking open, like it’s been encased in a sad mask ever since she opened that stupid e-mail.  

Astrid:  _It’s an actual question?  Is your house covered in naked lady pictures or something._

Snotlout:  _Have you been to Europe?  All those ladies in museums are naked_

Snotlout:  _And for the record, no, I have taste_

Astrid:  _Finn’s having friends over and I don’t feel particularly like hanging out with a bunch of goofy old carpenters.  Could Ayla and I come over?  I’ll buy pizza_

Snotlout:  _A girl not afraid to pay on the first date_

Snotlout:  _I like a go-getter_

An actual laugh sneaks out at that one and it’s silly and stupid and feels different and great. She’d gotten used to artful humor without even realizing it.  All the jokes in her life were predicated on seeing the same things and existing in the same place as the people around her.  They were all at the expense of something she always felt like she should have researched.  

She never would have guessed that at some point she’d need nothing more than some of Snotlout’s obnoxiously bad fake-flirting.  

Snotlout:  _That was a joke, in case you’re an idiot.  Yeah, you guys can come over, I’ll put away my porn stash_

Astrid:  _I thought it was art_

Snotlout:  _Art isn’t porn_

Snotlout:  _Let me know when you’re on your way_

The rest of the day is a little easier, with something to look forward to, and Ayla is thrilled when she hears she’s going to her coach’s house.  Snotlout’s basement is really the bachelor pad to end all bachelor pads. It’s something Astrid really hasn’t seen since her friends moved to their own apartments in their second year of college and realized that furniture costs money.  

There’s a treadmill and a vintage Bowflex in one corner along with a varied assortment of free-weights and on the other side of the room there’s a ping pong table.  Between, an assortment of duct taped bean bag chairs and a minifridge plugged into the same power strip as the TV.  Astrid bets its full of bud light and pizza rolls, but Snotlout surprises her by pulling out one of those tiny Gatorade bottles and handing it to Ayla.  He does, however, grab a beer for himself and offers her one, which she declines.  

“Thanks for letting us hang out,” Astrid picks up a ping pong paddle and ball—a surprisingly clean ball for all the beer pong she’s sure this table has seen—and starts bouncing it.

“What’s your uncle doing again?”  

“He’s got a bunch of carpenter friends over and they’re all making wooden ducks for some event, I have no idea.”  

“Uncle Finn said I could have his, he’s gonna paint it green,” Ayla announces, matter of fact as she surveys the room, sipping on her Gatorade.  She pushes a few buttons on the treadmill before wrinkling her nose and crossing the room to pick up the other paddle.  “Wanna play, Mom?”  

“No, you don’t want to play with  _her_ ,” Snotlout holds his hand out for the paddle, “that’s not even a challenge.”  

“I’ll play winner,” Astrid steps to the side of the table and checks her phone.  Checks that email.  It still looks the same, foreign and formal and detached.  

It’s the signature that gets her.  No, ‘love, Hiccup’.  No, ‘I’ll see you at home later’.  Just ‘signed by the office of Hiccup Haddock’ with his scanned signature.  She wonders when he started signing like that.  That’s the kind of thing a person is supposed to know about their husband.  

Snotlout doesn’t let any shots get by him, necessarily, but he’s distracted, looking at her phone curiously as she puts it away, and Ayla wins the first match.  Winning truly reveals her not so deeply hidden competitive nature and they spend the next couple hours waffling back and forth between the ancient Nintendo in the corner and the ping pong table and eating pizza. Eight o’clock rolls around sooner than expected and Ayla starts getting cranky, crying when she loses a game of Mario Kart.  

“Ok, that means bedtime,” Astrid stands from the beanbag that’s half absorbed her.  

“You’re leaving?” Snotlout sounds like he’s trying very hard to sound cool.  It’s a very familiar look on him.  

“Probably should, unless you want screaming tired child around.”  

“If you wanted to stay and hang out more, she could go sleep in my room for a while.  I mean, I don’t know if she needs a crib or—”

“No, Snotlout, my six year old daughter doesn’t need a crib.”  

He holds his hands up, “I don’t know anything about kid stuff.  I’m just saying.”  He glances towards her phone, which has somehow migrated back into her hand.  She frowns at him.  He shrugs.  

She thinks of how she wanted someone to talk to earlier, how she wished for a friend.  And well…it’s improbable and strange and odd but…Snotlout is probably the friendliest friend she has right now.  And he seems to be offering, in his own cryptic, stilted way.

“It sounds like you want to get your butt whooped at ping pong.”  

“You wish, Hofferson.” His eyes widen, he seems to catch himself.  “Haddock.”

“Give me half an hour.” She coaxes the half-asleep Ayla, who’s fiddling and frowning at the controller, to follow her through the door that Snotlout points out. 

His bedroom is more neutral than the rest of the basement, a queen sized bed with a black bedspread in the middle of the room.  It looks more like a hotel room than anything, honestly, nothing personal aside from a few baseball caps on the top of the dresser and a half empty glass of water on a bed side table.  She tries to think if she ever saw Snotlout’s bed in high school, or hell, in middle school or elementary school, and as she reads a bedtime story off of her phone and watches Ayla’s eyes dip closed, she can’t help but think that she never knew him very well.  For all that he was always there, on the fringes of her life annoying the shit out of her, they never really interacted.  It’s not something she ever thought she’d find herself regretting.  


	7. Chapter 7

Parenting is more work than Snotlout realized.  Like, not only does Astrid have to make sure that someone is always watching her kid, she also has to manage when she eats and what she drinks and when she goes to bed and it’s a little bit exhausting.  He’ll shout at the top of his lungs anywhere that he can do anything anyone else can, but he cannot fathom how Astrid manages to take such good care of a tiny human while staring so miserably at her phone ever two seconds.  

It takes her like, half an hour to get Ayla to go to sleep, which is also ridiculous because anyone could see that the kid was half asleep in front of the TV, but it’s more than enough time for Snotlout to feel really, fantastically stupid.  He called her  _Hofferson_?  Really? It’s something that strangely makes him question his own motives.  Because, well, he never really knew Astrid Haddock.  When Astrid married Hiccup she ceased to be  _Astrid_  and became Hiccup’s wife.  

And maybe it has to do with that stuff she was saying about being quiet, but he still feels weird because…well, because he liked Astrid Hofferson a whole lot for a really long time. Years.  She was competitive and pretty and kept him on his toes and didn’t take his shit.  To be completely honest, he’s pretty sure his massive, nearly decade long crush on Astrid Hofferson shaped what he would call his type.  

He’s worried he’ll start seeing her like that again, that it’s as inevitable as injury in professional sports, and well…he’s worried that the friendship they’ve honestly started to maintain would go straight down the drain.  He likes having a friend, he likes Astrid being his friend.  He likes Astrid, she’s still competitive and pretty and lacking in patience for his bullshit.  

Maybe this is just…what happens when I guy who’s used to a certain sort of lifestyle gets in a slump. Being a professional athlete doesn’t exactly staunch the flow of babes into a bed, and he was young and in great shape and utterly adored, of course he took advantage of it.  Often.  Well. He has a million stories that no one will ever want to hear no matter how bad he wants to tell them.  

And then there was the whole doom spiral of bad decisions, that was a party in and of itself and while it wasn’t healthy or well thought out, it was…relieving.  And he’s just trying to say…he doesn’t want some physical dead zone that only exists because his bedroom is right below his ailing father’s and Berk doesn’t have that many babes anyway to get in the way of he and Astrid being friends.  

Even if she is pretty and competitive and clearly miserable and in need of some good old fashioned Jorgenson cheering up.  

Who’s he kidding, that doesn’t exist.  He has no idea how to cheer someone up.  He’s just winging it based purely on the selfish truth that if he doesn’t try, he’ll feel shitty about it tomorrow.  

When she finally comes out of his bedroom, shutting the door quietly behind her, she looks more tired than she did when she went in.  Her phone is still in her hand and she’s still glancing at it like she doesn’t even know she’s doing it.  

“Ping pong?”  She points at the table, fakes a wide smile. “Just promise not to cry if you lose because it might wake my daughter up.”  

“That’s pretty big talk for someone who doesn’t have a ping pong table in their basement.  I practice literally all the time.”  

It’s a lie.  He hasn’t touched it in weeks.  

“Then maybe you have like…half a chance.  If I’m having an off day and I play blindfolded.”  She bounces the ball on her paddle for a moment before jumping and pulling her phone out of her pocket like it shocked her.  “God, you give one store your email and suddenly they’re all on you all the time.”  

“I know what that’s like. Except it wasn’t a store, it was a babe and my phone number.”  

She throws the ball at him and it hits him neatly in the middle of the forehead.  

“Seriously though, is something wrong?  You keep looking at your phone.”  

“No, I don’t,” she glowers at him, looking so much like Ayla he’s kicking himself for not putting their relation together instantaneously.  

“Uh, yeah, you do, like every two seconds.  Do you want me to time you?”  

“I want you to shut up and play.”  

Astrid misses after about six volleys and she swears under her breath, fists clenched at her sides.

“You sure talk big for all these stupid mistakes.”  He raises his eyebrows at her and she collects herself, restarting their volley with a conservative flick of her wrist.  

“It’s my anniversary.”

The ball flies past him.

“It would have been eleven years.”  

“Shit.”  He kicks himself for his reaction, real sympathetic there dude.  At this rate, the great art of Jorgenson cheering people up will never exist.  

She laughs, “that’s about right.  Shit.”

“Do you want to keep playing? Or…”  He wants to offer her something but is acutely aware that he has nothing she could want.  

“I’d take that beer now.”

“Ok.”

She takes it with a tight lipped smile, wrapping both of her hands around the can and looking at her feet. “Thanks.  It’s just…”  She seems to think about continuing, then she sighs and her words fall out in a jumble, “I got an e-mail this morning, we were planning some fancy anniversary lunch and he cancelled it, obviously, but he didn’t even cancel it, his office did. And I got this form letter of an email with this scanned signature at the bottom and I didn’t even recognize it. We were married for ten years and eleven months and I didn’t recognize how he signed his name.”  

“Uh…” he looks at his shoes, anywhere but at Astrid falling apart.  “Do you want a hug or something?”  

“I can tell you’re thrilled with the idea,” she rolls her eyes.  They’re wet, glassy, like she’d be crying if she weren’t holding the tears back with physics defying force of will.  

“Well, I’m kind of sucking at comforting you, so I need to step up my game.”  

She takes a sip of the beer and sets it down before stepping forward and wrapping her arms around his shoulders.  It’s not as awkward as it could be or should be, because he’s realizing he’s never touched her gently with no thoughts of competition in his head.  She’s too tall, obviously, and her watch is digging into his shoulder blade.  But her hair is really soft where it’s tickling the side of his neck and when he clasps his hands behind her waist it feels  _right._

For fuck’s sake.  

“Thanks for trying to comfort me,” she mumbles, pulling back after a too long minute and taking a longer drink.  He could use something stronger, to be honest, something to slow his brain down and stop it from leaping off a cliff.  

He’s always tried to slow himself down, to beef himself up and be the acceptable model of success. He knows he’s not Hiccup, he’s not trailblazing or special, and he never wanted to be. But God, right now?  Right now he can’t help but think where it would get him if he let it, if he let himself see the moment for what it is.  

If he let himself see Astrid as a woman, if he let himself see how easy it would be, how sad she is, how much she could use a distraction.  How right it might feel.  

He pulls his cap off and runs a hand through his hair, digging his fingernails in.  That would be wrong, and the worst part is, he knows it. He cares.  He won’t do it because it’s wrong, because it’s easy, because it’s exactly what everyone would expect of him.  

He could be brawny and dim and arrogant and  _successful_  right now but he won’t.  He couldn’t.

“Eh, it’s no problem,” he shrugs, “crying ruins the vibes, you know?”  

“Right, all the carefully curated vibes,” she smiles, and it’s a little drippy, but it’s there. It’s honest.  He doesn’t know what he did to deserve it.  “I should probably get home.  I’m sure it’s quiet by now.”  

He thinks of how quiet it’s going to be when she’s gone and thinks about asking her to stay.  About what that would mean.  About the fact that she’s his friend and if he hurt her he’d have to kick his own ass.  

He cheered her up and that’s something, but he’d still hurt her.  

“Yeah, get out of here, if you stay any longer I’ll kick your ass at ping pong and you’ll cry again.”

“Asshole,” she punches him in the arm with a little too much force, like she’s trying to prove she’s fine, and he understands so much it makes his chest ache.  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Ayla’s pretty sure you guys are going to win.”  

“I always win.”  

And it’s true, but if his biggest opponent is himself, does that mean he’s losing too?


	8. Chapter 8

Snotlout almost punches a referee after Ayla’s sixth game of the season. It’s a near miss, with him seeming to get in control of himself at the last second and resorting to yelling in the guy’s face, looking more passionate than a grown man should ever look about little league. Astrid can’t imagine what it’s about until she’s on the field and she catches a snippet of the conversation. 

“Tell me where in the rule book it says a girl can’t whoop your team’s a—butt. Tell me where,” Snotlout is pointing at the flimsy paper rule book, flipping through it, “because her mother made me read this thing and guess what, it doesn’t say it anywhere.” 

“We just think you’re playing favorites,” the referee crosses his arms, red and embarrassed. He looks like a guy that’s not used to losing and who doesn’t really want to learn how to handle it. “Always playing her first, playing her in every inning. That’s sexist too.” 

“I’m playing favorites because she’s the best on my team and unlike your group of kindergarten dropouts, we like winning.” 

“Whoa there,” Astrid steps forward, grabs his arm because she recognizes Snotlout pre-punch. “What seems to be the problem here?” 

“Oh, just this guy’s a sexist piece of sh—poop.” His bicep is coiled under her hand, like he’s thinking about throwing her off and punching anyway and she pinches it enough to hurt, hoping to calm him down. 

“I can see that your daughter is a very…competent player,” the referee starts, and Astrid knew some problem would come from the other team bringing the morality to the game. Normally they ask a third party to referee, usually some high school player looking for community service, but this week they came up dry. “But the coach is playing her on every inning and she keeps—”

“Scoring. Scoring is the word you’re looking for,” Astrid says in her coldest voice. Snotlout relaxes slightly, like he knows he doesn’t have to fight on his own anymore. “You know, where she runs around the bases and we get a point? Have you read the rule book?” 

“This is a load of sh—”

“Hey,” Snotlout cuts him off, “there are children present, watch your mouth.” 

The guy stalks off of the field and Snotlout stands back, looking smug, and Astrid realizes her hand is still on his arm. She drops it too quickly, quickly enough that her hand feels cold without the contact and her brain has a second to replay what it felt like before he looks at her like he’s expecting praise. 

“That guy was a jerk,” Snotlout shakes his head, “does he know what year it is?” 

“I have to say,” she frowns, looks at Ayla putting one of her teammates in an affectionate headlock on the field before running off in some sort of game of tag, “I’m a little surprised. And a little impressed.” 

“What? Just because I’m a professional athlete and a professional babe in demand I can’t, you know, believe women are people?” 

“Come over for dinner,” the words fall out of her mouth, “that deserves a real thank you. I…back when I was on a kids basketball team, it was co-ed, and I dealt with a lot of sh-crud, and I wish I’d had a coach willing to fight it like—”

“You don’t have to convince me, Astrid,” he smiles a smarmy smile, puts his hands on his hips, “you know I can’t say no to you.” 

“God, there you are, for a second I thought it was an imposter,” she laughs, knocks her fist against his arm. She can’t help but notice that it’s firmer than she’d taken account of previously, firm and warm and a bit awkwardly tan, like his tee-shirts don’t all have sleeves the same length. She clears her throat, looks around for Ayla and calls her over. “Come over at like…six-thirty? Is that too early?” 

Too early for what, she chastises herself. This is Snotlout she’s talking to, a late dinner would give him completely the wrong idea. Or would it?

He looks less like Snotlout—annoying, arrogant, narcissistic Snotlout—and more like an interesting person—Friend. Something.—given the recent conversation. 

“Nah, like I said, I can’t say no to you.” He winks, and it doesn’t feel like flirting, not really, it feels like a twenty year old inside joke that she’s been outside of until this exact instant. 

“You’re an idiot. See you later,” she punches his arm again, even though she just did, even though she still remembers what it feels like. The back of her neck feels hot and she looks at the sun, wishes she’d put sunscreen on that morning. 

“Sure thing.”


	9. Chapter 9

 

Astrid pretty much isn’t allowed to talk to Snotlout during dinner, because Ayla immediately reprimands all of his attention.  She shows him her room and her toys and he helps her put a dress on a Barbie without complaint, swearing slightly under his breath when it’s not as easy as it looks. At the table, Finn takes over the other half of his attention that isn’t spent on Ayla telling him non sequiturs about her day and ocean animals to talk sports.  Finn is a baseball guy, through and through, and Astrid always felt that pressure as a kid to play softball, even though Finn never forced her to.  

She never really had an interest, but she wonders now, if on some deep subliminal level, that’s why she always resented Snotlout.  She wanted so badly to love what he loved to strengthen the bonds in her already tiny family, but it just wasn’t her thing.  She’s glad, now, at least that Finn has someone to talk to.  Snotlout appears to be enjoying it too, preening under every compliment, telling exaggerated stories about how his home runs left the parking lot and broke a window half a mile away from home plate.

Finn indulges him, Ayla puts carrots on his plate and gives him a lecture about eating his vegetables. It feels a little too much like family and makes Astrid’s chest hurt, empty and full all at the same time.  

Ayla goes to bed with surprisingly little complaint, tired from her game and giving Snotlout a comprehensive tour of the house from the eyes of a six year old, and Finn follows soon after, citing an early morning and shaking Snotlout’s hand before retiring to his bedroom.  And then it’s awkward, for a moment, the two of them standing in a kitchen out of time, with no juvenile animosity between them.  Snotlout clears his throat.  

Astrid points to the front door, “want to go sit on the patio for a while?  It’s a nice night.”  

“Sure,” he shrugs, and she wonders when she learned what he looks like when he’s faking casual. Whenever it was, she definitely knows now, and it feels like illicit knowledge.  Like a secret not meant for her ears that she somehow managed to overhear.

She sits down in the chair Finn uses to whittle, drags her finger through a line of chips on the arm rest. He takes the opposite chair, the other half of a matching set that doesn’t match anymore, because one is worn down and the other is only rarely sat in.

“We don’t know each other very well, do we?”  She drums her fingers on the table between them, “we were…childhood rivals for ten years and somehow we never actually…talked.”  

“You didn’t want to talk to me, you wanted to cave my face in and I couldn’t let that happen to the rest of humanity.”  He runs his hand over his chin, “great art must be protected even in times of war, Astrid.”  

She somehow knows he’s at least half kidding and well…well, it’s funny.  Not an elevated kind of funny, not the kind of funny she’s used to. It feels good to laugh at it anyway, shaking her head, rolling her eyes.  

“See?  I never knew you cared so much for the good of humanity.”

“I didn’t used to, to be fair,” he shrugs, “in high school I was basically a shark in a tiny pond.  I learned a lot being surrounded by other sharks.”  

“Fair,” she nods, “I can’t imagine high school you spouting off at anyone about respecting women.”  

“That’s the thing,” he snorts, “in high school I thought girls were some prize I had to win, and I was a winner, so I didn’t understand why they weren’t lining up.  But the fact is that when I realized women could make their own decision to like me?  Damn, my life got better.”  

“You should have an after-school class for douchey high school boys about what feminism means to the hook up scene.”  She fakes a serious face and he nods like he likes the idea.  

“I’d just be like ‘yo, mini-players, feminism means encouraging girls to be as slutty as you want to be without judging them, and it means a lot of hot nights without any guilt for anyone.  And guess what, kids, when someone isn’t guilty, they’re way better in bed’.”  

“And they let you coach children,” she shakes her head, “I still can’t believe it.”  

“And then, you know, the next step, is if girls aren’t judged for getting what they want, then guys aren’t either, and guys can learn to knit and like butt stuff and no one gives a shit.”  

He says it so earnestly that it makes her laugh, a real gut-clenching laugh that she can barely speak through, “true, dude. Very true.”  

“And also,” he pauses for her to finish laughing, and it reminds her of Hiccup, her Hiccup, the Hiccup she misses all the time.  He always had a knack for talking to an audience, and maybe because he did, Snotlout wasn’t allowed to.  Maybe traits were divided between them earlier than they could remember, and he ended up the dull, dumb one just how she ended up Hiccup’s stability because he was all flash and flight.  “Also, that means that useless, unathletic twerps who get their asses handed to them by your badass daughter, have to face their own shame because they can’t hide behind ‘she’s just a girl, she can’t beat me’.  And if that had been true when I was coming up in the game, there would have been a lot fewer pampered little princes on farm teams who thought they were like…owed all the girls they wanted just because they could hit a ball a fifth of the time.”  

“Write a book,” Astrid nods, “I bet it would sell.  I’d buy it, you could call it Feminism: The Right Way to Knitting and Butt Stuff.”  

“Only if you’ll edit it,” he nudges her foot under the table with his, “I don’t trust these gems with anyone else.”  

“Naturally, I’ll do it in all my spare time.  You know, working and being a single parent just leaves me fucking  _bored_.”  

He looks out at the street, not at her, like he notices that the conversation just took a turn for the serious.  It always took Hiccup a few beats to catch the downturn in her voice, the exasperation tainting every syllable.  He always blabbered on  a few seconds before catching himself, eyes wide and apologetic. 

In the end it wasn’t a few seconds, it was a few days or a couple weeks before he caught on to ambiguous phrases such as ‘stop talking over me, I hate it.’

“You know, I always thought you and Hiccup would be the ones to make it or whatever,” he scuffs his toe on the old wood of the porch and she wishes she had a drink for this conversation. But she wants to have it, wants the words to exist outside of her own thrashing mind.  

“Me too,” she rubs her arms, suddenly cold, “I mean…I guess it’s just what you were saying.  We became different people than we were in high school, started wanting different things.”  She looks at her hands, still foreign without her ring, “we had this awful fight the night before I left.  He got asked to go on some six week business trip to Malaysia and said yes without asking me.  It wasn’t the first time he did that, or anything, but suddenly all I could think about was I had all the struggles of being alone with none of the benefits. And that I hated that he could just drop stuff like that on me.  He was going to be gone over our anniversary and that didn’t even matter to him.  It was like…I was always something that could happen later or tomorrow or never, and I wouldn’t mind because I loved him.”

“So you just left?”  

“Well, I told him I felt like leaving, and he didn’t see I was angry.  He offered me to come with him, said we could bring Ayla, but her passport was out of date and she was starting first grade in a month and he didn’t know.  And I realized in that moment that I couldn’t remember the last time he spent a day with her, a full day.  He was never good with the schedules, because you know him, he doesn’t need sleep like the rest of us and he’d get her up at 2 am and go on a drive and wreck her schedule for a week and just—I said he shouldn’t go to Malaysia, I said he should stay home and we should talk.  I said if he didn’t stay to talk, there wouldn’t be anything to talk about when he got back.”  

“He didn’t listen.”  

“Nope, the next morning he was gone, there was just a note that he forgot to pick up his dry-cleaning.” She shakes her head, “and all of that sounds really awful, but it really wasn’t, it was just…the last time.  He woke up completely over the fight and assuming I would be too.  Fights never stuck to him, nothing ever dug in and made him change or even think about changing.  He would always just placate, just use logic in this slow, soothing voice like he could hypnotize me into agreeing with him.  But I guess the spell broke.  And when he told me he was landed I told him I was going to stay with my uncle and that he could expect to hear from a lawyer.  I spent hours writing that text, because he wouldn’t pick up when I called and I didn’t want to seem angry and irrational anyway, but he never responded. And I haven’t really heard from him.”

Snotlout is silent, and she’s worried she laid too much on him, made everything awkward.  He huffs and kicks his feet up on the railing, struggling to reach and shifting to get comfortable, “that’s fucked, man.”  

She snorts, “yeah, it kind of is.  He sent Ayla a few postcards.  I guess he doesn’t know I’m serious yet.”  

“It’s like getting drafted,” he rocks back in his chair to the point where he almost falls backwards but catches himself, “you just get shuffled around until you want to pull your hair out, and it almost doesn’t matter where you end up, because you went through hell to get there.”  

“Yeah, except instead of playing professional sports, I’m playing single mom and resenting that it’s not that different than co-parenting was.”  

She’s said too much. She knows it.  Snotlout isn’t supposed to be a confidante, but he’s not supposed to be a decent human being either.  It’s confusing, she presses her hand to her forehead, inhaling and exhaling slowly.  

“It’s kind of refreshing, you know, to see that not even  _you_  have your shit together.”  

“Does anyone?”  She wishes again for that drink.  “I think adults vastly over-promised the fact that we’d all have our shit together someday.”  

“I don’t know, I have my shit together, I was just saying it felt good to be ahead of you.”  

“Right, Mr. Ex-star, just out of rehab and coaching little league.  You should write a memoir.”  

“I thought we agreed you were going to edit my future book: Feminism and Butt Stuff.”  

“That’s a catchier title,” she laughs, “no wonder you’re the talent.”  

“It’s what I was always trying to tell you, Astrid, I’m shocked it took you this long to catch on.”


	10. Chapter 10

Astrid: can I ask a massive favor?  
Astrid: like the biggest favor ever asked and I’ll owe you big time?

Snotlout: I like the sound of you owing me

Astrid: can you pick Ayla up from school?  Finn’s out of town and I got stuck in a meeting

Snotlout: Sure  
Snotlout: What time?

Astrid: 3:30 and I should be able to get her from your place by like 5

Snotlout: Is it cool if we go to the park?  Dad’s on some new treatment and really pissy

Astrid: meet you at the park by 5

Snotlout half expects to be escorted off of the property when he pulls up outside the elementary school at 3:30, surrounded by minivans and moms.  It’s actually the highest concentration of moms he’s ever seen and he feels a little stupid for not knowing about it. He likes to know everywhere potential hotties might group together, but since he just figured out he doesn’t mind kids a few months ago it’s forgiveable.  

And maybe it just doesn’t matter, even as a concept, because he’s as stupid as everyone thinks he is.

He can’t believe he’s doing this shit again.  The stupid schoolboy crush on the one woman he could never have.   And it is all Astrid’s fault, for being so pretty and smart and stubborn, and it’s her fault for joking with him and inviting him places and talking to him.  He’s not a Neanderthal, he knows the friend zone isn’t real, but even if it were he’d jump in it just to be friends with her.  

Because he likes being around her and it’s torture.  

Ayla comes out in a group of kids her age and sees him, her eyes lighting up.  She looks like Hiccup sometimes, like Hiccup used to, when he was all legs and freckles and weirdness, but the rest of the time she looks like Astrid.  Ayla runs to him hugs his leg, grabbing his hand like they do this every day and telling him that Astrid called ahead to tell the school, probably so he wouldn’t look like a child molester or some creep hitting on moms.  

She’s so on top of everything.  If she wanted, she could even be on top of him.  

He files that away with the other million genius pick-up lines that won’t ever get to see the light of day.  

Ayla is enchanted with his old little league glove which he grabbed because he doubted she would have hers with her, and it’s a little too big but it works well enough if he keeps his throws slow.  They tug at the tendon in his elbow the way that tiny underhanded tosses to a child shouldn’t, but it feels good to be playing in some capacity.  Ayla has quite the arm on her, for a six year old, and she makes it almost an hour before she starts getting tired and distracted, looking towards the playground.  

He sits down on the bench and pulls out his phone, because that’s what parents do at the playground, right?  He’s too disappointed that Astrid hasn’t texted him.  He’s gotten used to it, the periodic but relatively constant stream of mostly idle chatter.  Stuff like the weather is bad or the traffic sucks or how he should be proud of her that she didn’t punch someone.  He normally tells her that she should have punched them, and she calls him a bad influence but throws a smiley face in there to kick him in the chest.  

Ayla is at the top of the twisty slide when her face lights up and she points out into the parking lot. Sure enough Astrid is pulling up, driving too fast like she so often does and jumping out of the car.  She waves at Ayla and walks to the bench, sitting down next to Snotlout and –whoa, leaning towards him and what the fuck—kissing him on the cheek.  

It’s light, barely there, but his whole face feels like it’s on fire and tingling and he clears his throat, “you missed.”  

“What?”  She cocks her head at him, holding her arms out for Ayla to come and hug her as she finishes her slide.  

“Nothing I just said ‘you’re…uh…here’.  I think you need your ears checked.”  He scratches the back of his neck, looking anywhere but at her, trying to calm the strange tingling still plaguing his cheek.  He wants to ask her to kiss the other one to balance him out.  

Dammit, another good line crafted for the wrong person.  He’s wasting all his best material on her and she doesn’t even know it.  

She’s sitting too close to him, still, and his hand feels like it’s fighting with the rest of him, wanting so badly to reach out and touch her when he  _knows_  that’s a bad idea.  There’s a strange, unfamiliar feeling in his stomach, halfway between bad fish and the feeling when a roller-coaster goes down the first big drop and he can’t stop thinking about her lips on his cheek.  Why would she do that?  It’s not something she’s ever done before.  He thinks he can remember her kissing Hiccup’s cheek eons ago but like…that wasn’t romantic or anything, was it?  

He digs his fingers into his leg to make sure they don’t escape his control.  She seems utterly oblivious to the fact he’s unraveling, and she looks so horrifyingly calm as she leans forward to talk to Ayla.  It’s like she doesn’t even know what she does to him.  

To be completely honest, this kind of unintentional power is kind of hot.  

“Mommy,” Ayla holds one of her mother’s hands and plays with her fingers, “since we’re already at the park…could I maybe play a  _few_ more minutes?   _Please_?”  

Astrid sighs, purses her lips, and she looks so phenomenally tired that Snotlout wants to ask how he can help more.  Like…offer a back massage or something.  He doesn’t even know.  But he wants to help.  He knows he already helped, but the usual feeling of vague superiority is completely missing because he wants to keep helping, to do more.  

“Well…you did say please. Ten more minutes, tops.  I’m setting a timer and that’s when we’ll leave.”  Astrid pulls out her phone and actually sets a ten minute timer as Ayla runs back to the playground, “this is actually really nice, then the timer gets to be the bad guy and she goes willingly.”  

“You’re smart,” he cringes, because that’s so obvious.  God, she’s going to figure out and it’ll ruin everything, “I mean that’s smart.”

“Thanks,” she smiles at him, tired but obviously grateful.  “And thank you so much for this, seriously, you just saved my ass.”

He tries and fails not to think about her ass.  She’s a menace.  

Does she realize how thick the air is between them?  Like it’s so humid he can’t breathe, but he only feels like that when she’s here.  Or when he thinks about her too much.  But it’s definitely her fault, because he’s never felt like this before with anyone, not even fifteen year old Astrid.

“We had fun, just played catch for a while then I dicked around on my phone.”  He shrugs, thinking casual, “it’s just not that hard to win your eternal gratefulness, I guess.”  

She knocks her shoulder against his, “I know somewhere under all that arrogance you appreciate a genuine ‘thank you’.”  

“Umm, it’s really not…like, it wasn’t actually the most massive thing in the world.  Or whatever.”  Casual.  Be casual, Snotlout.  “If you ever need like…occasional help with stuff sort of like this or with uh…you know, because Ayla can’t drive or be alone or whatever for a while…”  

“Is this going somewhere?” She cocks her head, blonde braid falling over her shoulder and looking so  _soft_.  Her smile is bemused, like she’s really looking at him, like she finds him interesting for some reason he doubts he’d understand.  

He has never felt less casual in his entire life.  Which doesn’t make any sense, because he’s said a lot flirtier things to a lot of technically hotter people, but like…it’s  _Astrid_  and there’s this horrible thing happening to him where he’s just trying to be honest but everything is coming out as flirting.  

“I’m just saying you know where to find me, you know.”  He laughs, “assuming you haven’t lost my number or something.”  

“I’ll keep that convoluted offer in mind,” she shakes her head, “it looks like Ayla had fun, anyway.”

“Yeah,” he nods, “I mean, I gave her the birds and the bees talk, so I hope that’s ok.”  

“Oh good, I was dreading that,” Astrid rolls her eyes, bumps their shoulders together again and lingers this time, leaning against him ever so slightly, “I’m glad she could hear it from someone with a lot of super entertaining stories.”  

He wants to put his arm around her.  He’s scared he’s going to have to jump up and hurl because his heart is beating way too fast. She keeps touching him, and he can’t ignore it, can’t brush it off as ‘she’s obviously just flirting’ because it’s Astrid and she couldn’t be.  He wants to touch her back but he doesn’t know if he could stop because he feels out of control.  Out of control and nauseous and kind of sweaty and get it together, Snlotlout, this is not how he rolls.  

He could do it, just stretch and yawn and…and then what?  

That’s the problem here, the place he’s so hung up.  The ‘then what?’  Because she’s a woman and he likes her and he’s a man who knows how to handle himself and if everything went perfectly then…what?  He can’t imagine not calling her again, which is what has been expected in all of his most recent successes.  He can’t imagine choosing an ending to their friendship, and he can’t imagine it continuing because…how does that even work?  How do people who’ve slept together just…sit in the park and hang out and get beers together?  

Yes, he could try to kiss her, he could try and put his arm around her.  He could try to get her into bed and yes, it would probably be really fun and to be honest, she looks like she needs it but…but he doesn’t like the idea of the silence that would follow.  He’s never slept with a friend before, and he’s never had a friend like Astrid.  

She yawns, slumps sideways and rests her head on his shoulder.  Everything about the motion is friendly, the way she scoots down the bench slightly to be comfortable and closes her eyes.  Her head is bony somehow, hard and almost uncomfortable against his shoulder.  His heart beats so fast he bets she can hear it, rattling through his body.  She doesn’t say anything though, and if he thought she was trying, he’d say she was smooth.  

“I’m so tired, man, Finn’s only been out of town for a couple days and I’m dying here.  Johann is buying some company out East too and I keep bringing work home with me and it’s just…ugh.”  She exhales, pouts, squints her eyes shut and shifts again, her shoulder jabbing him in the side.  “How’s your week been?  Your dad is on some new treatment?”  

He’s shocked she remembered. Pleasantly shocked, happily shocked. So pleased with the fact that he slips a little further down that dangerous slope.  At the bottom, he’d  _act._ He’d turn and kiss her and blurt out twenty carefully catalogued lines at once.  And they’re all so great that one of them, at least, would work, and this entire friendship would blow up in his face.  

“Yeah, some chemical radio thing, he has to get an IV and then complain and throw up for a week, or I guess it doesn’t work,” he sighs.  Part of him is glad for the distraction, the conversational cold shower reminding him of the fact that this is  _Astrid_. His friend.  “It’s hard to watch.”  

“Sounds like it,” she shrugs, her shoulder poking him a little harder for a moment, “hey, you know if you ever need help with him, I’m here, right?”  

“That’s a little less fun than helping you.”  

“True,” she smiles, “but I owe you now, remember?  Eternal gratefulness and all that.”  

He remembers when that would have been music to his ears.  When he would have done anything to make Astrid owe him and then used it to ask for all sorts of embarrassing stuff, knowing she was too stubborn and too proud to back down.  

The fact is that everything he wants from her, he knows he really can’t have, and having her around doing his laundry and waiting on him will only make it worse.  

“Nah, you don’t owe me. We had fun, if anything, I owe you for getting me out of the house.”  

“Are you sure?”  She sits up halfway, raising an eyebrow at him. It’s a new Astrid expression, either one that he didn’t used to see or one that she didn’t used to make, and those always feel special.  Anything other than a glare feels special, to be honest.  She’s so close he could kiss her, not even really move, just lean forward a few inches and…

And then what?  

“Yeah, don’t worry about it. I’m sure I’ll fuck up at some point and use this for leverage then.”  

“It’s probably true,” she smiles for a moment before biting her lower lip.  Just barely, just enough to torture him.  

Either he’s crazy or she looks at his lips.  Quick, so quick that he could convince himself he was making it up if he wanted to, and God he doesn’t want to.  

She cocks her head, shifts slightly against the back of the bench, her knee bumping against his, and it feels like there’s a physical tether between them.  Snotlout wants to turn his head, to stop this while he knows he could handle the fallout, but he can’t, because if he looks away it feels like the world will fall apart.  

He realizes that for all his internal arguments, he’s never actually thought about kissing her, not really. He hasn’t thought about what it would be like, which one of them would make the move.  He shouldn’t be shocked that she’s the one who looks like she’s leaning in, head turning slightly to the side.  

The phone timer goes off and Astrid jerks back, sitting straight up, her back rigid.  Ayla groans from her roost at the top of the slide, coming down with her pout in full force.  Astrid stands up suddenly, looking totally composed, like something didn’t just almost happen, slinging her purse over her shoulder and adjusting Ayla’s shirt.  

“Did you thank Snotlout for picking you up?”  

“Thanks Coach,” Ayla looks up at her mom, obviously hoping that was good enough to get her off the hook.

“No problem, kiddo. I’ll see you at practice, alright?”

Ayla nods and Astrid straightens her daughter’s bangs, a compulsive sort of caring motion that makes Snotlout wonder what her fingers would feel like in his hair.  

“See you later,” Astrid waves, “and seriously, if you need help with your dad, just ask. I’m…around.”  

He nods and tries not to watch her walk away, tries not to notice when she looks back at him over her shoulder, frowning and looking almost confused.  


	11. Chapter 11

There’s no definitive answer to the question: “how long after divorce should someone start dating again?”  Astrid was really hoping there was a chart or something, some sort of American Psychiatric society guideline that she could accept as rote, but there isn’t, there are just endless lists of how she should feel about everything, and none of them line up with how she actually feels.  

And it shouldn’t even be crossing her mind, but ever since she almost kissed Snotlout, she’s been thinking she must be really lonely.  

She’s not really sure what she was thinking, it was more like she wasn’t thinking.  At all, apparently.  He was just…he helped her and he didn’t ask for anything in return and the sunlight was at some impossible angle that made his eyes look really pretty and her daughter loves him and—

It’s just not completely outlandish.  It makes sense.  She was lonely and he was there and unintentionally sweet and—maybe he gets a boost because the bar used to be set so low for him, so if Snotlout is anything other than completely awful, he looks kind of alright.  

And it’s not like he’s bad looking or anything, again, it makes sense that some kind of misdirected lonely energy would end up being directed at him.  He’s grown up a lot since high school and she genuinely likes him as a person now and they have fun together and sometimes he has pretty eyes even when the sun isn’t at the exact perfect angle and—

She needs a date.  Or something.  

Probably  _something_ , because she wouldn’t be putting so much thought into Snotlout’s…everything if she didn’t need to release a little pent up energy.  And that makes sense, she guesses, because no matter how distant she and Hiccup were in the end, sex was still relatively routine.  Sex had never been their problem, and fighting honestly made it happen more, so that last year was very carnally satisfying to be completely honest. It strikes her that these last six weeks are the longest she’s ever gone, you know, barring the first eighteen years.  

It makes sense that she’s looking at Snotlout differently.  He’s there all the time and he’s nicer than he should be.  And growing up did him well,  she can notice that without meaning anything by it, he’s more angular than he used to be, more muscular.  That childhood pudge is mostly gone, due to either drugs or professional sports or both and—

How did she get here? She’s legitimately quantifying Snotlout’s inconvenient attractiveness and using drugs as a positive.  Of all the things she thought she’d tell herself in her life ‘Snotlout isn’t actually hot, Astrid, that’s just the drugs’ never made the list.  

Plus, even if she were in a position to look or to care, which she’s not, because of the impending divorce all of that, but even if she were…he’s not her type.  Obviously.  She was married to Hiccup for a decade and never had any complaints about him physically, except for the whole thing where he was never physically there.  This is obviously just some weird grief and loneliness reflex to the exact other side of man.  It makes sense that she’d be interest in brawny and dumb.

But it’s not like Snotlout is even dumb, he’s just smart in a different way, and he’s obviously learned a lot the last ten years and—

And she really wishes that side of her brain that keeps defending him would shut up.  It would make this a lot less complicated.  

Ayla is at a friend’s house and won’t need to be picked up for a few hours and Astrid obviously isn’t getting any work done, sitting in front of her laptop and googling ‘dating after divorce’ like some lifetime movie character that’s about to get a date with a serial killer, so she decides to go to the store.  They’re out of some things anyway, and it’s a distraction, and anything is better than sitting here and beating her head against nothing.  

The store is one of those things about Berk that hasn’t changed.  The tile is the same, the hazy fluorescents making the cashiers look slightly green still shine from the lofted warehouse ceiling.  She gets a cart and starts pushing it slowly around the perimeter, looking more than anything.  And as she turns a corner into the frozen food aisle, a familiar face becomes one with the scenery.  

“Ruffnut?”  She knows, logically, that it’s her old friend, but the woman in front of her is wearing a suit and her hair is cut short, both polar opposite to the person Astrid knew in high school.  The most familiar thing about her is the box of pizza rolls in her hand.  

“Astrid?”  Ruffnut smiles and looks more like herself.  “My brother said you were in town!”  She drops the pizza rolls and takes two long steps to throw her arms around Astrid’s shoulders.  

“It’s good to see you,” Astrid steps back, “and I have you say, you look different.  You clean up good.”  

Ruffnut rolls her eyes and slouches slightly, looking infinitely more familiar, “and you look exactly the same, of course.  It’s called aging, you should try it some time.”  She looks at her watch, a very shiny, very expensive looking watch, “what are you doing right now?  Screw pizza rolls, we should go to happy hour.”  

“Sure,” Astrid’s cart is empty anyway and she pushes it aside, “I don’t have to pick up my daughter until nine.”  

“Oh right!  You have a kid!  And an ex-husband, you’re like living the American dream, tell me more.”

Astrid knows it’s a joke, but by the time they get to the restaurant, driving in Ruffnut’s brand new SUV, Astrid has told her a good deal of it.  How things weren’t working out, she’s home for a while to regroup. Ruffnut lectures her about not letting Tuffnut ‘do his thing’ and get her more money and Astrid laughs it off.  

“What is it, exactly, that you do to afford watches and cars and fancy suits?”  Astrid takes the first sip of her margarita.  Applebee’s is the only place in town with an actual happy hour, of course, and Ruffnut looks even more out of place here.  Even more ridiculously posh.  

“Oh, I don’t buy any of those things,” she smiles a wolfish smile, “I’m a senior editor for the Ok Magazine,” she flashes the watch, “some celebrity I can’t tell you about bought me the watch so that I wouldn’t disclose some sensitive pictures I also can’t tell you about.  I can tell you it’s an actor who you’ve definitely imagined naked and that he has a pool boy that likes it dirty, though.”  

Astrid laughs, “that’s quite the deal you have going.”  

“It pays the bills. And more, I get to know everything about everyone.”  

“Not married?”  

“Why would I be married when I can have fun?”  Ruffnut waves down the waiter and orders another drink, “no dear husband to slow me down.  No offense.”

“None taken,” Astrid stares at her drink, swirls it around and makes the ice clink together, “I don’t regret it or anything, that’s the weirdest part.  Never once have I thought ‘I shouldn’t have married him’ or anything, it’s just…I guess sometimes these things run their course.”  

“Fair,” Ruffnut shrugs, “now you can run the fun course.”  She grins and Astrid can feel the question coming before Ruffnut opens her mouth, “any courses caught your eye?”  

“What? No,” and it’s true. It was just a weird lonely moment, she barely even looked, so it doesn’t even count as  _eye-catching_ , not really.  “I’m not even really divorced yet, I’m still waiting on him to sign everything, I’m not exactly leaping back into the dating pool.”  

“I’m not talking about dating, you were just married for a decade, you don’t need to  _date_.  You need a palate cleanser.”  She nods seriously, like she knows what she’s talking about and she’s used to people listening to her.  “Any of those around here?”  

“I don’t need a palate cleanser.”  She rolls her eyes, and it feels dirty just saying it.  She used to be glad, in college and after, that she skipped over the complicated dynamics of dating and hooking up.  She had Hiccup and they were fine and it felt like wonderful way to cheat the system.  

She never had to second guess the way anyone looked at her, she never had to carefully manage how she talked to people lest she give them the wrong idea.  She doesn’t even know what she’d look for in a palate cleanser.

“Sure you do.  You need to do something stupid with someone, wash all the married off of you.  How else are you going to have any fun?”  

“I don’t know?  Maybe like a normal person?”  She laughs, “I do have to say, your last ten years sound way more exciting than mine.”  

“I can’t tell you about it, that was in the contract for the car.”  She winks and Astrid shakes her head.  

“I missed you.”  

“Right back at you, babe. So, have you seen anyone else around? I heard that Fishlegs knocked up his college girlfriend and stuck around and Tuffnut said Snotlout is back taking care of his dad.”  

“Yeah,” Astrid nods slowly, because this feels like an interrogation, like she’s attached to some invisible lie detector test and Ruffnut will  _know_ …something.  Astrid doesn’t even know what, but something she doesn’t want Ruffnut to know. “Fish’s kid is on the same little league team as my daughter, and Snotlout’s actually coaching.  I’ve seen him around.  A bit.”  That doesn’t sound right, it sounds like a lie that could easily be disproven, but more importantly it feels like a lie.  Snotlout is her friend.  Remarkably, impossibly, and she’s not going to keep that a secret.  “We’ve been hanging out a lot actually, he’s different than he was in high school.”  

“Yeah, probably has way more drug connections,” Ruffnut shakes her head, actually looks a little embarrassed, “I know it’s not…I know it’s not cool, but I helped with the initial story on him.  The one right after his bad test when he went on that binge, it…it wasn’t particularly pretty.”  

“He’s clean now,” Astrid is shocked by how defensive she feels as she continues, “and I don’t think you’d exactly be calm and level headed if your entire career just evaporated into thin air, so I’d reserve your judgment for something you understand.”  

“Hmm,” Ruffnut nods, narrows her eyes, “fair point.”  

“I mean,” Astrid shrugs, “his dad’s probably dying so…if that’s not reason to be nice, I don’t know what is.”  

“You don’t?”  She raises an immaculately groomed eyebrow and her eyes widen with something like childish glee as she looks over Astrid’s shoulder towards the door, “speak of the devil!”  She whistles, a crisp sound that gets the attention of everyone in the restaurant, “Snotlout! Come sit with us!”  

Astrid tries to look nonplussed as Snotlout scoots out the chair next to her and flops into it.  His arm brushes against hers and she holds perfectly still, like she didn’t even notice.  She wishes she hadn’t noticed.  It would be easier if she hadn’t noticed.  

“Ruffnut Thorston,” he grins, “I almost didn’t recognize you, you look good!”  

“Still an asshole, I see. Heard you and Astrid made nice after what?  Twenty years of animosity.”  Ruffnut’s smile is predatory as she glances at Astrid out of the corner of her eye.  

“No one can stay mad at this face, Ruff, it’s a blessing and a curse.”  He runs his hand over his jaw and Ruffnut rolls her eyes.  Astrid follows suit, but she can’t help but notice it wasn’t automatic.  She didn’t see him strutting and automatically brush it off.  

Is Jorgenson charm a real thing?

Wow, she’s just full of things she never thought she’d think today, isn’t she?  

“Still an asshole. It’s good to see you.”  

They rehash Ruff’s vibrant, interesting life for the next hour, mostly, alternating between celebrity gossip she can’t ever fully enumerate and gossiping about people they went to high school with.  It’s a conversation that would have been at home at their ten year reunion, but none of them went.  Ruffnut was busy with work, a phrase Astrid will never get used to, Snotlout was playing across the country and Astrid?  Well, she was working and taking care of a toddler, a world away.  

Ruffnut asks Snotlout about what he’s been up to, surprisingly delicately given her old interrogation tactic of run-in-hitting-and-see-where-it-goes but it only makes sense that she learned tact at some point, given her profession. Astrid can’t help but notice that he says less than he said to her, even before she started prying it out of him or sharing on her own.  It’s all positive, all boastful.  Apparently the ‘big leagues just couldn’t handle him’ and he practically left on purpose.

The lying that previously would have annoyed her is just…gratifying, because he trusts her with something.  Something big, if the way he’s glossing over it entirely is any indication.  She likes the feeling too much.  

“So, it seems like you and Astrid landed back home pretty close to the same time, that’s a coincidence.” Ruffnut steers the conversation with a heavy hand and looks at Astrid, her eyes narrowing meaningfully.  

“Not that I’d call my father’s impending death and her divorce a coincidence,” Snotlout spits, suddenly bitter and Astrid feels thankful for his tone in a way she wouldn’t have expected.  

“I’m just saying it’s interesting,” she looks back and forth between them, “it might be kind of nice though, having someone familiar to be single with.”  

“I don’t think either of us is thinking about being  _single_ , Ruff.”  Astrid can’t help but notice that Snotlout relaxes as she says it, and she wonders when it became so natural for them to be on the same side of something.  

“Right, right, because of the divorce and the death thing but I’m just saying, neither of those are permanent.”  

“I’m pretty sure death is permanent,” Snotlout scoffs and Astrid can’t help but notice that he doesn’t include divorce.

Ruffnut throws her hands up like she’s giving up, “whatever.  Anyway, this was really fun, I have to go because I’m pretty sure Tuffnut still wants his pizza rolls and I am nothing if not an abiding and helpful sister.”  

“Ok,” Astrid stands up, looking around for the waiter to close their tab, “I’ll see you later, Snot—”

“What?”  Ruffnut laughs, “oh yeah, I gave Astrid a ride over here from the store but well, I’ve got to rush home now and it’s easier to skip that whole…you can give her a ride back to her car, right Snotlout?”  

“Yeah,” he says a little too quickly, just quickly enough to get the cogs in Astrid’s head whirring at full speed.  “How long are you around for?  We should do this again.”  

“Eh, maybe the weekend, maybe the week, it all depends on a lot of moving parts down in LA, so—But Astrid has my number, you can get it from her,” Ruffnut says like an afterthought over her shoulder on the way out the door.  

Real smooth, Ruff. Really fucking smooth.  

The table is suddenly too quiet and the phrase ‘palate cleanser’ is going around and around in Astrid’s head like bubbles swirling around a bathtub drain.  

“So, good seeing Ruffnut again,” Astrid nods, thinking casual, “she’s grown up a lot.  Like wow.”  

“I don’t know which half of those stories were lies and I don’t think I want to.”  Snotlout shrugs, “and I mean, she’s crazy.  Talking about us being  _single_  and—crazy.”  He clears his throat.  

She remembers when hearing something like that would have had him flirting with her until she made him stop, and she wonders what changed.  She wonders what she’d say if he flirted with her now, if she’d blush on her way to  _no_.  She looks at him out of the corner of her eye, following the straight edge of his jaw and glancing at his face before looking back at her drink and finishing it.  

This is stupid.  She’s obviously not ready.  He’s obviously just…there, and she’s lonely and projecting and he is single in a way that she’s definitely not and…maybe that’s part of her problem.  She can fix that part, she could set him up with someone.  

“Why are you single?” She blurts all at once and he raises his eyebrows.  He’s wearing that old black baseball cap, the that’s not really black anymore, and it makes his hair look absolutely inky next to it.  

“Go on, I’m waiting for the other half of the insult.”  

“No, I’m serious.  Why are you single?  I never see you with anybody and you don’t talk about anybody.” She fiddles with the end of her braid and it feels like the start of an anxious habit, “I mean, you’re a good looking guy and you were a professional athlete for God’s sake, isn’t there someone you’re…hooking up with or something?”  

“Don’t say ‘hooking up’,” he wrinkles his nose, “you just sounded like somebody’s embarrassing mom for a second and it actually made you less hot.”  He coughs over the last few syllables, looking anywhere but in her eyes.

“I am somebody’s mom, that’s not an insult.  But seriously, I should set you up with somebody!  It would be fun, come on. Do it.”  

“Why does that sound like a threat?”  He takes off his hat and scratches his head before setting it back in place and she jerks her eyes away from the flex of his arm.  Yes.  This is a good idea.  The best idea she’s had all day, in fact.  

“Maybe it is.”  She starts running through a list of work friends in her head, trying to find a match.  Not Jane, she’s got that crush on the guy in accounting, and Katie’s sweet but wouldn’t keep him on his toes.  Lily would be perfect but…but she’s really busy with her after work softball thing and they probably wouldn’t have anything in common anyway.  “Come on, just do it.  I work with a lot of cute girls, I promise I’ll find someone good.”

“If they’re so cute why don’t you date ‘em,” he snorts, the tips of his ears reddening.  

“Don’t be embarrassed,” she smacks his arm with the back of her hand, “come on, let me do this, it’ll be a good side project or—”

“I’m not really looking for anything serious right now,” he shrugs, “I wouldn’t want to uh…tear through your workplace like a tornado of sexual charisma and talent.  It causes real damage, I wouldn’t make it awkward for you.”  He smiles his smarmiest smile but there’s something different behind his eyes, something steady.  She wonders if Ruffnut talking about his dad like that made him upset and she struggles for the words to tell him that Ruff was just being an idiot.  

“I—I guess I know why you’re single,” she pats his arm and god, she’s touching him a lot, “you should really stop saying stuff like that if you ever want to get a date.  Or a hook-up.  Or anything.”  

“Stop saying hook-up, it’s freaking me out.”  He finishes his beer and stands, dropping a couple of bills on the table.  It’s enough to cover hers and Ruffnut’s drinks too and Astrid can’t help but think that if Ruffnut hadn’t been here this would almost be a date.  

Or the preamble to a hook-up.  A palate cleansing hook-up.  It’s only seven thirty and she doesn’t have to pick up Ayla until nine, and she wishes she had less time.  She wishes she were in a hurry and she didn’t even have a moment to think about this horrible, awful, miserably bad idea.  

“Are you coming or not?” He waves her towards the door.  

“You wouldn’t leave me here,” she stands, feeling a bit too confident, a bit too stupid.  

“I think you overestimate me.”  He holds the front door for her even though he shouldn’t, because he can’t read what’s going on inside her head and he doesn’t know what this is doing to her lonely, exhausted,  _divorced_ resolve.  

“I don’t think that’s possible,” her voice drips sarcasm as she climbs into the front seat of his truck, heart beating way too fast.  


	12. Chapter 12

“Feet off of the dash,” Snotlout reaches over to bat Astrid’s shoes from his pristine, mint-condition dashboard that she doesn’t seem to care about at all.  She’s too warm where his hand glances across her and he wipes his fingers on his jeans, trying to forget.  They’ve been touching a lot lately, in a way that feels almost like flirting and it’s too much to feel it while knowing that it means nothing. “This thing is a  _classic_.”  

“Classic, I know, you’ve only told me a few million times.”  She rolls her eyes, smiling crookedly at him, “I bet you say that to all the girls you give rides to.”  Her posture is too stiff and he doesn’t know how he knows she’s up to something, but it’s obvious.  

She’s probably going to keep pushing with that whole ‘setting him up’ thing, and he can’t take any more of that nonsense.  It makes him want to blurt that the only one he wants to be set up with is her.  And he can’t say that, because she’d kick his ass or worse, go along with it.  And then they wouldn’t be friends anymore, they’d just be people that slept together.

“Careful, you sound jealous.”  

Even he can hear that the bravado is fake, his voice brittle and too high pitched.  He revs the engine, shifts quickly, trying to cover up the feeble moment with noise and power.  

“I guess I’m just…curious. You’ve been single in Berk for a while, how’s that going?”  She cocks her head like it’s an innocent question, like she actually wants to hear his answer.   Like he has an answer other than ‘after rehab I couldn’t look in the mirror for a month, let alone go out on the town meeting honeys, then you showed up and ruined everything.’

And it’s even worse because he  _knows_  why she’s asking. She’s divorced, she’s alone and…well, he knows she’s not going to be alone forever.  She’s going to find someone, she has needs and desires and none of them involve him the way he’d like them to.  

Astrid is going to date. She’s going to  _hook-up_  with people and he never realized how lucky he was that she’s been married to Hiccup for a decade.  Because it was Hiccup, his gross, overachieving, under-respecting cousin and he did  _not_  want to touch Hiccup getting laid with a ten foot pole, even in his imagination.  It’s kept him from picturing someone else with Astrid, from the pain of realizing even after everything he could never, ever be enough. But now that it’s a bunch of faceless assholes more shameless and far luckier than him he can’t get it out of his head.  

“I just told you that I’m not looking for anything serious.”  

“Yeah, but there are not serious things, there are one night stands, and hook-ups, and I don’t know the difference but—”

“Where you’re concerned, there is no difference, you sound ridiculous saying both.”  

One night stand is worse, actually, because it’s so…definite.  Because twelve hours with Astrid could never be enough, no one is that stupid, if any lucky bastard got one night they’d fight for longer. They’d get days and weeks and months and she wouldn’t have time to hang out with him anymore.  

He finally understands that whole ‘you can’t have your cake and eat it too’ thing, because he wants Astrid around so badly it hurts, but that just makes it harder not to, you know, eat her.   _Literally_.  And that’s yet another pick-up line for the Astrid-tainted bag of genius.  

“So it’s a bit of a dry spell?”  She looks genuinely concerned but also mischievous, her face earnest and her eyes narrowed like she’s taking aim.  

 _With you it’d be anything but dry_.  Wasting his best material.  He’d hate her if she weren’t so great.  

“None of your business.”

“You should really let me set you up, even for a one-night stand.”  She thinks for a moment, “ever thought about Ruffnut?  I don’t think she’s looking for anything serious and she’s only in town for the weekend.  You could invite her over, chill and put on some Netflix.”  She waggles her eyebrows and it looks ridiculous.  She looks so dumb.  

It makes him smile for no reason and he’s  _frustrated_.  Because none of this makes sense.  People aren’t supposed to be fucking adorable when they look so stupid.  He’s not supposed to want to kiss their stupid wiggling eyebrows.  That’s not a thing he feels.  

“That’s not what it’s called.  Jesus, it’s like talking to my grandmother.”  He shakes his head, turning onto the side road and realizing that he really doesn’t want to get where they’re going.  Because even though this conversation is honestly awful, he’s going to  _miss_  her and her stupid eyebrows. “And no, I haven’t thought about  _Ruffnut_.  That’s gross, Astrid.”  

“Why is it gross?  She looks really good!”  Astrid punches his arm and if it weren’t impossible, he’d think that she’s flirting.  

“Because it’s Ruffnut, that’s why.  She tried to bury me alive once, remember?  When she stole that bulldozer?”  

Astrid laughs so hard she has to hunch forward, clutching her stomach, and goddammit she’s such a dork. She’s such a fucking adorable dork and he wants to hate her so bad.  

“Yeah, yeah, laugh at my pain.”  

“It’s not my fault your pain is hilarious.”  When she looks back up at him her cheeks are red and she looks younger, and this could very well be his high school self’s dream sequence where he convinced her to go up to Makeout Point with him.  “So not Ruffnut then.”  

“No.”  

“Is it because she scares you.”  

“I’m man enough to admit that she scares me just a teeny, tiny bit.”  

She snorts at that, kicking her feet back up on the dash.  He reaches over and knocks them down and she sighs, crossing her arms.  

“I’m just trying to help. Maybe if you’re having issues you just need a wingman.  Wing-woman,” she amends, “I could be your wing-woman.”  

“You can’t just make up words and pretend they’re real.”  

If she wants to be his wing-woman, does that mean she expects him to be her wingman?  Does she expect him to stand there, scoping out guys with her, helping to get her laid by some random, lucky, horrible asshole? He knows that’s a thing friends do for each other and he’s suddenly struck with the thought that he can’t be her friend if that’s what she wants.  He won’t.  

“I’ve never dated anyone. Or hooked up with anyone,” she admits it like it’s a secret.  Like she trusts him with secrets.  “Hiccup and I were just friends until we weren’t and then we got married and…”

“And you’ve come to the master for advice.”  He’s half cocky and half bitter and has never been quite so much in his own way.  

“I thought I was coming to someone with the same level of expertise.”  She sticks her tongue out at him, face scrunched up, and she looks cute that way too.  “I just…Ruffnut said I need a palate cleanser and…I don’t know, you know?”  

“As in Ruffnut wants you to fuck some random guy?”  He hates Ruffnut.  He always did, really, because she scared him and wasn’t scared of him, but this is next level hatred.  

“She says it’ll wash the married off, and that sounds stupid, but maybe she’s right?  I’m suddenly so up in my own head about all of this that I can’t figure out what I want versus what I think I should want. Maybe if I tried it, it would make everything more obvious.”  

He pulls into the grocery store parking lot and parks next to her Jeep, half expecting her to just quit the conversation there and get out.  But she doesn’t, she turns to lean back against the window, kicking her feet up on the seat.  He tries to swipe them off and she stretches her legs over his hand, setting her feet on his lap.

“Well, at least they’re off the upholstery, even though you’re paying get my jeans dry cleaned.”

“You’re so weird about your truck,” she snorts, “and you get your jeans dry cleaned?”  

“The upholstery is older than you are, didn’t anyone ever tell you to respect your elders?”  He knows he’s pouting but it’s making her smile, a small barely there expression that’s mostly in her eyes, her mouth barely upturned like she hasn’t realized it yet.  “And I’ll dry clean my jeans when someone uses me as a foot rest.”  

“Well if I’m already going to be billed, might as well take advantage.”  She leans back further, shifting to get comfortable and inadvertently sliding her feet further onto his lap.  He rests the heel of his hand on her shin, fiddles with his keychain and turns off the ignition.  “What do you think about…I don’t know, about the idea of a palate cleanser?  Do you think it works that way?”  

“I think it depends on how much your previous shitty sex life made you need one,” he shudders, “and I don’t want to hear about Hiccup’s sex life.”  

“So you wouldn’t mind hearing about mine?”  She relaxes slightly as she says it, crossing her feet and just…moving so much he can’t look anywhere else.  

“What?  And hear you talk about your chaperoned dates to the park, grandma?”  It’s stupid. It’s a diversion.  It’s better than her spoiling the best movie he’ll never see.  

“I don’t get what’s so fucking offensive about me saying  _hook-up_.”  She laughs, wiping her hand over her face.  “I’m sorry that I’m behind on my slang, that’s what happens when you have a kid and can’t use any of the fun words around them.  Ayla’s like a parrot, she’d be running around school telling everyone in ear-shot that her mom had a ‘one-night stand’.”  

“I guess I get that, I stubbed my toe the other day and said ‘fudge’.”  His hands migrate to her shoes, playing with her laces, acutely aware of when his fingers brush across the soft skin of her ankles.  Coming from someone who’s never understood foot stuff, she has pretty ankles, but she has pretty everything so he shouldn’t be surprised.

“Sounds like we both need more time around adults,” she smiles, “maybe we could hang out without Ayla sometimes and swear for a few hours straight.”  

“Oh my god, Astrid, stop. Do you hear yourself?”  

She laughs, face flushing, “oh wow, I’m sorry, accidental innuendo.  It was accidental.  I swear.”

If it weren’t impossible, he’d think she defended herself a little too staunchly, he’d think there was a small part of her that meant exactly what she said.  

“Right, I’m just supposed to believe you aren’t hitting on me.  Which, I mean look at me, it’s a little unlikely that you wouldn’t be.”  

“Ass.”  She leans up and knocks his hat off of his head, placing it on her own.  She looks cute like that too, eyes shadowed more than the rest of her face.  It went fully dark at some point, the only light in the cab coming from the street-light above them.  “You know, I think I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve seen you without a hat.”  

He musses his hair, trying to fight the permanent hat head that’s followed him around since little league. “I think I can count on one hand the amount of people I let take my hat.  You should be flattered.”  

“You letting me do something?  That’s hilarious, you’re a real comedian, Snot.”  

“I try.”  

It’s quiet for a minute and he thinks the conversation has fizzled out.  It’s probably good, because he managed not to embarrass himself, but he still doesn’t want her to leave.  She doesn’t seem too eager to leave either, just sitting there, running a finger over the worn rim of his hat, like she’s not used to wearing one.

“How long does it last for you?” She asks, looking at him too intensely.  

“What?”  Is she asking what he thinks she’s asking?  He wants to use the fallback, the ‘as long as you need me to, baby’, but it sounds wrong in his head when she seems so sincere. “Because that’s something everyone lies about to sound impressive.”

“What?  No, oh no, not that.  I mean…how long does a dry spell last?”  

He bets she’s blushing again and it makes his chest tight, his skin feeling too hot and reminding him  _exactly_  how long his current drought has been.  

“Again, something everyone lies about to sound impressive.”  He shrugs, doesn’t look at her, “before rehab.  Not that this is typical, or anything, super atypical. Seriously.   _Super_  odd.”  

“That’s like three months.” She sounds like she’s worried about him. It makes him want to ask her if she wants to help him out.  It’s not so much a pick up line as pathetic but that doesn’t make him want to say it any less.  

“I bet you know all about that Ms. Marriage.”  

“I wish it were that easy,” she shakes her head, “that would have been a fixable problem, you know. Fire goes out and you can light a candle.  But a lot of other stuff can go wrong.”  

He rests his hand on her shin, squeezes slightly and hopes she knows it’s a hug.  He feels oddly naked without his hat and she seems closed off, her face shaded almost entirely.  He almost doesn’t hear her when she starts talking again, so quiet that he nearly has to hold his breath to make out the individual words.  

“I think I like the idea of a palate cleanser.  I want it to be that easy.  I haven’t been me without Hiccup in so long that it feels like the ties are impossible to cut.  But sleeping with someone else would feel like…severing something.”  She slides her feet off of his lap and sits up, leaning in to place his hat back on his head.  Her hands linger behind his ears, curling in his hair, and it’s like the park all over again, hating himself for wanting to move away while she stares at him like she wants something.  

She leans in.  He stops her with a hand on her shoulder, his eyes flicking automatically between her lips and her eyes.  

So.  He chooses  _now_  to do the right thing.  Of all the times in his life that he was an asshole, now is the time he’s going to take the high, lonely, dry road.  Next thing he knows he’ll be self-sacrificing.  

“I’m not going to be your palate cleanser,” he sighs, “I’m your friend.  It would be like getting demoted.”  

“Fair,” she sighs, her hands leaving his head and sitting limply in her lap.  

He hates himself more than a little bit.  He wonders if he could take it all back.  He won’t, because he already went through the embarrassing part of doing the right thing, but he wonders if he could.  

“It’s not because you’re not hot or anything, you’re ridiculously hot.”  

She smiles like she needed to hear it and he can’t believe that people don’t tell her every day. Like every minute of every day.  

“We’re just—you’re kind of my friend now and I’m not going to ruin it with one night.”  With the best night of his life, undoubtedly. God, he hates himself.  He’s an idiot.  Self-control looks awful on him.  

She punches him in the shoulder, just hard enough for it to sting, “you’re a good guy, did you know that? Somewhere under all the arrogance and muscle you’re alright.”  

“Don’t tell anyone, it’ll ruin my bad boy charm.”  

“As if you have any charm at all,” she kisses him on the cheek, her lips light and almost cool against his skin.  He wants to turn his head and kiss her back, to give righteousness a big middle finger and ride off into the temporary sunset.  She sits back and sighs, checking the time and frowning, “I gotta go, I’m going to be late to pick Ayla up and she hates that.  But I’ll see you soon, alright?  And thanks for the ride.”  

“Yeah, you only owe me like…a lifetime of gratitude.  Don’t think anything of it.”  He winks at her.  

She rolls her eyes and climbs out of the truck, shutting the door more gently than she usually does and waves as she walks to her car.  He waits until she’s out of the parking lot to drive home, just to make sure he doesn’t change his mind and follow her.  


	13. Chapter 13

“No!  I haven’t poured your tea yet!”  Ayla is in her baseball jersey and tutu, smacking Snotlout’s hand away from the small plastic cup not yet filled with invisible liquid. 

He looks appropriately mollified, sitting back in the tiny chair, knees bunched to his armpits.  Astrid shakes her head fondly, mouths ‘thank you’ at him and goes back to her book.  It’s interesting but bland, and it feels more like textbook reading than anything has since college.  It wouldn’t be getting done if Ayla weren’t distracted.  

“Then you eat the cookie, then you drink the tea…there we go, that’s right,” Ayla prattles happily, pouring fake tea and adjusting her stuffed ninja turtle in the third seat around the table.  

Finn is in the garage, and Astrid can barely hear the rhythmic rasp of sandpaper against raw wood, and it’s better than music in the peaceful moment. She glances at Snotlout, who’s covertly rolling his eyes as Ayla pulls his pinky away from his small cup and tells him he’s not being classy enough.  She would have never thought Snotlout could be peaceful.  

He didn’t used to be, as kids, in school.  He drove her crazy most of the time, always trying to beat her.  She remembers knocking out his last baby tooth on field day in fifth grade, because he just  _had_  to try and push her to win a stupid race.  And later, yeah, she sort of  _got_  it.  It took that kind of determination to be good, that kind of determination to make it in any sort of athletic capacity.  

She doesn’t know whether it’s time or loss or failure that slows people down, but if she’d told sixteen year old Snot that one day he’d be playing tea party with daughter on a Friday afternoon and  _smiling_  when he doesn’t think anyone’s looking he would have laughed in her face.  And then probably hit on her.  And punched her.  

The order is debatable.  

At some point she started staring at him instead of her book, her eyes glazing over slightly.  She blinks.

“What?”  Snotlout puffs out his chest, neck reddening slightly.  

Astrid sticks her tongue out at him.  He raises a furtive middle finger behind his back where Ayla can’t see it.

“I thought you were supposed to be reading.”  

“I am reading,” she looks back at her book and can’t remember the last sentence she read.  It’s too warm in the room, humid almost and she reaches back to open the window. It’s the sticky window, the one that creaks.  The window that got her caught sneaking out about half a dozen times in high school.

She remembers standing perfectly still in the corner in her darkest clothes, thinking she got away with it until Uncle Finn turned on the light and tapped his watch, sending her back to bed without a word.  She wonders, for an instant, just a tiny, insignificant little instant what would have happened if she were sneaking out to meet someone else.

Hiccup was all secretive glances, secret codes spelled in picked dandelions under her window.  She felt like a secret agent, deciphering some code and chasing after him.  But, well, say she’d been sneaking out to meet Snotlout, or someone.  

It would have been less espionage and more battle, she would have run through the front door as fast as she could and been in his car driving away before Uncle Finn realized what was happening.  

It’s not a fair comparison, not really, because her empty bed would have led to equal grounding in both situations but…well, it’s interesting. Worth thinking about, maybe.  

A lot of things about Snotlout have been worth thinking about lately. He turned her down, yes, he told her he wouldn’t be her one-night thing and it stung more than she ever expected it to, but…well, it also makes her  _like_  him more.  He’s not someone who screws people over.  He’s more thoughtful than she’d thought and he’s sort of comforting and warm.  

She spent too much time on the internet after Ayla went to bed that night, googling Snotlout Jorgenson’ apparently super interesting love life. He’s slept with pretty much everyone, it seems, or at least people think he’s slept with everyone.  It wasn’t just girls on the list either, there were men, teammates, celebrities.  

She imagines he’s good at it.  

Good at it in a way she doesn’t understand, in a methodical, habitual, practice made perfect way that obviously built him quite a reputation as a stud. It’s not something she put too much thought into, but she always kind of wondered what it was like to be at the hands of someone who knew what they were doing and not in a personalized, learned together way, not in Hiccup’s meticulous, mechanical, investigative way.

But someone actually widely experienced.  Her eyes flick to Snotlout’s fingers, curled around a small plastic tea cup. He catches her eye and she looks away, flushing.    

“I think it looks like you’re just staring at a book.”  

“Do you have to be so confrontational all the time?”  She sets her book aside, and slips off of the couch onto the floor.  “This just looked so much more fun than reading.”  

Ayla distributes a cup to her, fills it with invisible tea and starts rehashing the kind of fake cookies there are when there’s a knock at the door. Astrid sighs, sets her cup on the tiny table, and uses Snotlout’s shoulder to pull herself to her feet.  

The door opens easily, silently, unlike the window, and standing on the other side, Hiccup is holding a bouquet of roses in her face.  

“Daddy!  Daddy, daddy, daddy!”  Ayla knocks over the entire tea party set up charging over to the door and throwing herself at Hiccup, arms around his waist.  He drops the flowers with the force of it before kneeling and drawing his daughter fully into his arms.  

“Hiccup?”  Astrid feels stupid as she says it but she’s too stunned to say anything else.  

He stands up, Ayla on his hip, and pulls her into a one-armed hug. “Whatever I did, I’ll fix it.”  He buries his face in her hair and Astrid can’t help but feel that it’s foreign for a moment.  “I’ll fix it.”  

She swallows the incomprehensible urge to push him off and just stands there, arms frozen at her sides.  

“Uh…I guess that’s my cue to leave,” Snotlout breaks the silence and Astrid steps out of the hug feeling oddly apologetic.  Today isn’t going to be fun or relaxing anymore, it’s going to be stressful and confusing and she wishes it were five minutes ago.  

“Snotlout?”  Hiccup sets Ayla down but keeps hold of her hand, taking a step into the room.  

Astrid doesn’t remember inviting him in.  She doesn’t think she did.  

“No, someone else has these good looks,” Snotlout puffs up, tries to look taller and wider, swaying between his feet.  Astrid hasn’t seen him posture in weeks and it looks silly, a kid trying on their father’s clothes in front of the mirror.  “I’m sure I’ll see you around,” Snotlout tucks his hands in his pockets and moves towards the side door, “see you later, kiddo.”  

Ayla waves, resting her head on her father’s hip.  Snotlout waves back, self-conscious, ducking his head and leaving.

“What was he doing here?”  Hiccup cocks his head like he has a right to ask, like it’s a simple question.  

“What are  _you_  doing here?”  Astrid doesn’t sound as angry as she feels. “You couldn’t have called or—”

“I woke up to some guy knocking on my door and handing me divorce papers, Astrid.  You’d already signed them!”  

Ayla tugs on her father’s hand, frowning.  She’s started jutting her chin forward when she scowls, a strong, defiant expression that she learned somewhere Astrid can’t place.  

“Honey, can you go get your uncle and tell him who’s here?”  Astrid fakes a bright voice and Ayla isn’t fooled, sullenly trudging back to the garage door.  “We discussed this, I said what I was going to do, I don’t know why you’re so shocked.”  

“Look, it—it was a really bad time for me,” he sighs, crumples in on himself. He looks repentant, staring at his hands and inching closer to her.  “I wasn’t all there for that fight, you know that, with the merger and everything, I just—I’ll fix it, just let me fix it Astrid.  I’m not signing those things until you let me try.”  He picks the papers up with the flowers and holds them towards her.

His voice breaks but Astrid can’t help but think it sounds like a threat.

She takes the envelope and tucks it into her purse where it hangs near the door.

“Please, just…tonight, ok?  Can we just talk tonight?  Just give me that.”  

“See?  Told you my daddy was here,” Ayla comes back into the room, dragging Uncle Finn by two fingers.  

“Finn,” Hiccup shakes hands like it’s a skill, his elbow pumping evenly. “Good to see you.”  

“You could say that,” Finn says slowly, like he’s mulling over each word individually.  “I have to say this is a surprise.”  

“I—It couldn’t wait.”  He straightens himself up, “if you wouldn’t mind watching Ayla for just a few hours, Astrid and I have a lot to talk about—”

“I hadn’t said yes yet.”  Astrid cuts him off, raising her voice to talk over him.  He looks at her strangely for a moment, like he doesn’t recognize her.

“Oh,” he looks around, flustered, and Astrid wonders the last time he heard ‘no’.  “Will you go somewhere to talk about this with me?”  

“Sure,” she nods, “but I can’t be out late, Ayla has a baseball game tomorrow morning at nine.”  

“Oh good, I can go—baseball?”  Hiccup frowns.  

“That’s your question?”  Astrid’s voice sounds loud in her own ears. Defiant.  She kind of likes it.  

“Well, thank you, Finn—”

“I haven’t said yes either,” Finn smiles at Astrid, one of his soft, earnest smiles that always made her feel like she was doing something right. “But I’ll play with my Ayla-bug as long as you need me to.”  

“Thanks,” Astrid almost reaches for Hiccup’s hand when she says it, force of habit, but his hand is in the wrong place, bumping against her wrist. “I’ll drive.”  

Hiccup follows behind her, “that’s good because I took a cab.”  

She doesn’t wait for him to buckle in before pulling out of the driveway and driving down the street.  She doesn’t know where she’s going but she likes that he doesn’t know that.  It’s an odd sort of revenge feeling like she’s the one with the plan this time.  

“You really couldn’t have called?”

“I didn’t think,” Hiccup nods, bites his lip.  “I didn’t think about a lot of things.  I think…I think I sort of blocked out that last fight.  I just kept expecting you to come back.”  

“I said I wasn’t.”  She bites her lip, “it’s been almost seven weeks, you know.  It’s not like a long weekend, Hiccup.  You haven’t seen your daughter in almost two months.”  

“I know, I know, but I have more time now!  I finished the merger, got everything signed and flew it into Berlin on the way here—”

“Right, Germany, halfway between Berk and New York.”

“I just wanted that out of the way, ok?  I wanted to be able to talk to you without anything hanging over my head.”  

She wants to ask if their impending divorce is hanging over his head. It feels petty and she knows it, but damn would it be nice.  She’s in the habit of letting things out and she can feel herself regressing back into silence.  

“Wow, this place hasn’t changed.”  He looks out the window, looking around, “it’s like it’s ten years ago. I think we drove this way on our first date—not that I’m trying to flummox you with nostalgia but…” he smiles, sheepish, and she sees the ghost of who he used to be in his expression, she remembers the kid that stuttered through asking her out and later confessed to having a notecard in his pocket with what he wanted to say.  “But would it work?”  

She snorts, “I don’t think you understand why I’m upset.”  

“I don’t, I don’t, just explain it to me, I’ll listen.”  He taps on the window with a knuckle, “turn here, we should see if that Italian place is still here, I could never afford it before.”

She turns.  The restaurant is still there.  They get a table in the back, a shadowy corner of an outdated place with white tablecloths and velvet wallpaper.  Astrid picks at the basket of bread on the table, poking it with her knife.  

“I don’t even know where to start, Hiccup.”  She rubs her hand over her face and his eyes cling to the bare patch of skin where her ring used to be.  

“Just…try.  I’m trying, ok?  Please just try.”  

“Ok…your promotion.  The last one, they told you it was forty percent travel and you didn’t ask me first—”

“Those things are always an exaggeration, Astrid, I didn’t—”

“I thought you said you were going to listen.”  She looks at him sharply and his mouth opens and closes before he sits still, apparently ready to listen.  “Even when you were around, which wasn’t enough, I felt like I wasn’t talking to you.  I felt like an audience.  I started missing you even when you were right in front of me.  You’d start talking in the middle of my sentences and not even notice that you were interrupting me and I just…one day I just thought, Ayla’s going to grow up not thinking anyone’s listening to her.”

He waits a three count of silence before talking, and it would be funny if her heart didn’t ache so much, “I’ll work on it.  I promise.”  He reaches for her hand and she lets him, watching long, freckled fingers curl over hers and being baffled by how little she feels.  His palm is cold on her knuckles, clammy, and she bites her lip, her hand heavy under his.  “What else.”

They talk.  

They get wine and pick at the bread basket and talk.  It’s the longest conversation they’ve had in two years, probably, and Hiccup is funny and charming and Astrid wants to believe it’s not one of his masks.  That he’s not an executive or an up and comer or a picture perfect husband right now, he could just be Hiccup.  Sweet, energetic, high-flying Hiccup.  

Some old stories they haven’t thought about in years are newly hilarious and they both have new ones.  Astrid tells him about Tuffnut the ambulance chaser and Snotlout ripping the sleeves off of his hot pink Berk Ballerinas tee shirt to make it manlier, and Hiccup laughs.

“So I take it Snotlout has been around a lot, I’m shocked you haven’t killed each other yet.”  

“Nah, he’s…” she struggles for the word, grasping at something that isn’t there, “he’s been through some shit.  I’m not going to say tame but I’ll say…leveled off.”  

“I heard about my uncle, is he back here to take care of him?”  

Astrid nods, “yeah, coaching little league.”  

“They allow him to coach children?”  Hiccup laughs, and it’s  _mean_. A mean laugh she doesn’t like.  

“That’s what I said at first, but—but he’s really good at it, actually, Ayla loves him.  And she doesn’t really have enough family to begin with so…”

“He’s probably good at it because he’s at their level, if you know what I mean.”  The mean laugh again, his eyebrow quirking like the whole world is a joke that only he gets to be in on.  

“Is that a short joke or are you calling him stupid?”  

Hiccup snorts, “I hadn’t even noticed the short joke, good one.”  He must cue on her expression because he’s suddenly somber again, “yeah, I’m glad though.  I’m glad he’s been around for Ayla.  And that she likes him.  And that he’s coaching little league, all…all good stuff.”  

“Being a yes man really doesn’t suit you, Hiccup.”  

“It’s just…you two used to drive each other crazy.”  

“People grow up.”  She shrugs. She wonders how many times that mean laugh has been associated with her, it haunts her like a lyric stuck in her head, going around and around until it doesn’t even sound human anymore.  

If someone is going to be cruel, she’d rather it be with a fist than a laugh. “Even Snotlout grew up.”  

“Now that, that is truly shocking.”  He weaves their fingers together.  Astrid stares at them, confused, because it should be more familiar. Hiccup used to feel like her home too, when they were poor and hopping from shitty studio to shitty studio, waiting for her commission or for his job to take off.  It was always comfortable as long as he was there, she was always happy. She doesn’t know when his hand started to feel waxy, like a statue, like she’s holding a sculpture of her Hiccup instead of the genuine artifact.  

All that she can tell is that something shifted so long ago that she’s not even grieving anymore.  

“How long are you going to stay here?”  He asks, voice low.  She realizes that they look like a couple, just some normal couple in a corner of a nice restaurant.  Neither of them are dressed for the place, both in jeans and tee-shirts, and she’s instantly uncomfortable.  

She’s always hated that, going into places where she’s not dressed appropriately.  It’s like going hiking in high heels, it makes her feel dumb, like she doesn’t know what she’s getting into.  Hiccup never minds.  She saw him go into a Michelin star restaurant in France in his pajamas once, utterly comfortable.  She’s never been that comfortable anywhere.  

She thinks of Finn’s living room earlier, watching Ayla play, pleasantly sleepy while she tried to read.  That was the closest she’s come in a while, frankly.  Everything in that room belonged there.  Everyone.  

“I don’t know yet.  Until my head is on right.  I never wanted to leave, not like you did.”  

“Come home, please.”  He holds her hand in both of his, “it’s…it’s not right without you there.  I miss you, I miss our daughter, we can work this out. One fight isn’t enough to throw this all away for.”  

“It’s obviously more than one fight.”  

“We talked about it,” he laughs, this time hysterical, judgmental.  Like she’s being difficult.  

She remembers him laughing at Snotlout like that, once upon a time in high school when he tried to suggest something.

“I can’t work on things if you don’t give me a chance.”  

“Can you stop pushing me for a second?”  She jerks her hand away, cradles her head in her hands.  

“I shouldn’t have rushed it,” he reaches for her but stops himself. “Take…we can keep talking about it. Keep telling me what I did.”  

She sighs, rubs her temples.  

His phone rings, a loud long trilling over the quiet background music. He answers it without apology, giving her some gesture that’s less ‘sorry’ and more ‘what can you do?’ as he slips out of the front table and heads towards the front door.  

She sees the next twenty years again, just like she had the night she left. She sees Ayla growing up, she sees the apartment lonely and rattling, eating alone like she had been.  She pulls the papers out of her purse and sets them on the table along with a pen she won’t miss.  Her heart feels lighter immediately, half empty and sad and half buoyant at the thought she’s regaining control.  From here on out, her decisions are her own, entirely.  

It feels official in a way it hadn’t before when she gets up and walks out, sparing Hiccup a last glance as he paces, talking animatedly into his phone and not sparing a glance in her direction.  

She pulls out her phone and calls her uncle and he picks up on the second ring, “How’d it go?”  

“It was unexpected…I…”

The park catches her eye, the diamond where she’s spent every weekend morning.  She smiles, “can you watch Ayla for a while longer?”

“Sure, do I need to put her to bed?”  

“Maybe.  I don’t know.  I have to go do something.  Hiccup might make his way back, I don’t know about that either.  I love you.”  

“Love you too, Astrid,” he clears his throat, “and for the record, I’m proud of you no matter what happened.”  

“Thanks.”  

She hangs up and turns towards the Jorgenson house.  


	14. Chapter 14

Snotlout: How do you know if you actually love someone?

Fishlegs: Who is this?

Snotlout: It’s Snotlout Jorgenson just the guy you’ve known your entire life  
Snotlout: did you delete my number?

Fishlegs: My wife made me when you got caught with all those prostitutes

Snotlout: marriage sounds so lame  
Snotlout: I knew I should have asked Tuffnut  
Snotlout: I’ll just ask Tuffnut  
Snotlout: go ahead and re-delete my number I don’t know why I still have yours anyway

Fishlegs: Who do you think you’re in love with?

Snotlout: it’s not me, it’s a friend  
Snotlout: trying to talk him out of messing his life up for some girl

Fishlegs: I have a theory that love manifests as a physiological addiction, that people get attached to someone and start needing their pheromones like a drug, and broken hearts are withdrawal. I wrote an article on it, do you want me to send it ovr?

Snotlout: *over  
Snotlout: and you were so close to sounding smart

Fishlegs: for the record I never resaved your contact, so I don’t even have to delete it again

Snotlout: Good. For. You.   
Snotlout: I don’t know if your kid needs to play tomorrow, man, we kind of want to win

Fishlegs: I hate you  
Fishlegs: But please play him, seriously, if we don’t get pictures of him playing in every game, my wife will kill me

Snotlout: she sounds super fun, buddy  
Snotlout: kind of like being addicted to the bad drugs that make you buy escorts  
Snotlout: and they were escorts, Fishlegs, not prostitutes, I was a professional athlete not some douche taking advantage of female poverty

Fishlegs doesn’t text back and Snotlout takes another shot of jager, trying to focus on his videogame and dying yet again. He can’t focus, he just keeps running the afternoon over and over in his head. How Hiccup looked the same but different, older, sadder in a way that made him seem oh so infuriatingly deep, like always. And Astrid looked at him like he was a surprise, like she never looks at boring old Snotlout. And Ayla was so happy to see him because obviously Hiccup was a great dad in a way Snotlout could probably never be. 

Of course Hiccup is still perfect, still the best, still dashing in at the last moment and making the big save like the big, dumb hero. He’s probably sweet talking Astrid right now, telling her how things will be different, how he loves her, how he’s perfect and if she could just remember that everything would be fine. She’s probably listening. 

He thinks of a couple days ago, sitting in his truck with her and just…staring. Taking her in. She was different then, she wasn’t Hiccup’s Astrid. She was the one he knew from when he was younger, the one he could never decide whether to punch or kiss or chase or run away from. She was drawing him in like a magnet. He still regrets not kissing her when she was ready and willing and so desperate for someone to make her feel real again. 

He likes her more than he should, more than he knew he was capable of. When he plays with her kid he can’t help but think about doing it forever, about making pancakes on a Sunday morning like some married schmuck. It feels like manipulation when she made him feel so much and then took it all away, leaving with Hiccup just like she always does. 

But really, honestly, why would he ever want to give all of this up? He has his own basement, his dad spends half his nights at the hospital these days and it’s like having a glorious bachelor pad. He never had that before, not really, he always roomed with teammates to keep the party going or he shared a two twin bed room with a guy who cried through the night. Maybe he likes the silence, maybe he likes his space. He’ll get one of those big entertainment centers, one of those ones with the shelves for everything. He’ll get a PS4 and invite friends over and…

And all he can think of is Astrid. All he can think of is Astrid on a nicer couch, putting her shoes on the leather like she was raised in a fucking barn and laughing at something he said. She never used to laugh so good-naturedly before, like she hopes he’ll start laughing too. It makes his chest hurt. 

Since high school and since learning more about himself and the world, he never thought monogamy was possible, that it was comfortable or honest or anything that anyone could do without lying to himself. He thought that all men were like Fishlegs and all wives were like his, and couples were just people stuck together forever due to accidental fate. But when he thinks about Astrid, looking at him like he was a challenge and she was a winner, her fingers curling in his hair like he could anchor her…he thought that feeling might be why people committed to kissing the same person for a lifetime. If he could feel like that even occasionally, he might understand the appeal. 

But he doesn’t. Because Astrid is with Hiccup, just like she was always supposed to be. 

Sometimes he feels like his soulmate never got finished. Like they’re sitting somewhere in God’s closet, half composed. Like he was supposed to flame out properly and die instead of keep living alone as a charred husk and that making him a soulmate would be a waste of time because they’d just end up lonely too. 

There’s a knock at the door and he thinks he imagines it, but it happens again, louder and more insistent. He stumbles a bit on the way to the door even though he didn’t drink that much and he realizes that his tolerance has gone down.

When Astrid’s around he doesn’t have to drown himself to stop feeling things he doesn’t want to deal with. He was even willing to deal with feeling for her as long as it wasn’t feeling numb. It’s funny how quickly numbness feels like normal. 

He opens the door and blinks twice, because Astrid is standing there in the same clothes she was wearing earlier, arms crossed, tapping her foot. 

“Is there any chance we could get drunk?” She shifts, awkward in a way he hasn’t ever seen her. It’s like her world just shook and she’s waiting for it to stabilize, like she’s coming down off of some bad high. 

“I’m way ahead of you, come on in.” 

She follows him to the basement, takes two shots in quick succession, grimacing after the first and accepting the second with a brave face. He tries not to look at her, tries not to notice the delicate strands of blonde falling out of her ponytail and into her face. He wants to brush them back just to feel the curve of her cheek.

He doesn’t even have a line for that, he has a paragraph. About how pretty and perfect and stubborn and strong she is and…and…

“Do you want another?” He holds up the bottle, waves it around.

She holds up her hand, “no, I’m going to let those two sit.” 

“How’d things go with Hiccup?” He cuts to the chase, because he doesn’t want to sit here and build himself up. He wants to move on. He wants to go into Portland next week and meet someone and have some pointless night that cleanses him completely of her. 

Maybe Ruffnut was right about that. 

“He said a lot of things,” she purses her lips, smiles a fragile, watery smile that makes him want to hug her, “none of them were ‘sorry’ or ‘I love you’. It was like he was going through the motions, saying everything he was supposed to say to plug me back into his life, but he forgot the feelings behind it.” 

“I think you need another.” His hand brushes across hers as he pours another shot into her glass. His glass. He didn’t have two sitting out so she’s using the one he was just drinking from and their lips have touched by proxy through the rim of that glass.

She takes the shot. Licks her lips. Prods the wrenched wide hole in his chest with the little swipe of her tongue. 

“It didn’t even upset me. It was like…I was over it a long time ago and I didn’t even realize it.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

“Stop being so nice, it’s freaking me out.” She sets the glass down on the table, leans back and puts her arm over her eyes. She’s too far away, even just at the other end of the couch, and he hates that he can’t feel her and know that this is real. 

“He’s an asshole.” 

“Am I a bitch if I agree?” She laughs, “am I one of those awful women who spends so much energy bitching about her ex-husband?” 

“You’re still leaving him?” Snotlout can barely convince himself to ask. He knew from the second that Hiccup walked into the room that he and Astrid would be an inevitability. He hasn’t thought about the alternative. 

The alternative where she leaves Hiccup and shows up at Snotlout’s house, looking to get drunk. 

“Of course I am.” She grins, her smile cautious and her eyes daring, “I’m nothing if not decisive.” 

“I just…I mean, I knew as soon as he showed up it would be the Hiccup show all over again—”

“I’m on a new program,” she sits up straight, glares at him like she can set him on fire with her eyes, “it’s called the Astrid show.” 

“I might actually watch that.” 

She laughs, that happy, crinkly eyed laugh that makes his chest hurt. “Me too.” 

“What’s the first episode?”

“Well, obviously it’s a zany sitcom about an empowered woman and I pick up a one night stand and he’s not ok with me being a single mom and—fuck, I’m fucked, man. What am I even doing?” 

He’s silent because he doesn’t know, because he’s not going to say anything that drives her back to Hiccup.

She snorts, “I have no idea what I’m doing.” 

“To be honest, I don’t think anyone but Hiccup ever did.” Snotlout hates saying his name, hates the way it trips off his tongue like…well, like a hiccup. 

“You always seemed to,” she looks at him and it hurts, because she looks fond and like she’s thinking hard and he wants to believe her expression, “you went after what you wanted. You got what you wanted.” 

“It wasn’t what I expected.” It’s the first time he’s said it out loud. He wants to dwell on it but he can’t because Astrid is next to him, mind reeling a hundred miles a minute. 

“Doesn’t matter. You tried and that’s respectable. You didn’t back down, even when everyone told you a kid from a small town isn’t ever going to make it in the big leagues.” 

“You see, Astrid, not all of us are programmed to stop. Ever.” Some people just run themselves into the ground to say that they didn’t turn back. It doesn’t feel like bragging. It feels like a cry for help. 

She smiles at him, “that sounds like a line, you know, like you’re trying to tell me you’d never, ever stop.” Her smile fades. She looks at her hands, at anything other than him, “do you know that I’ve never hit on anyone, I’ve never…tried. I hate that I’ve never tried.” 

He can hear the implication that she hates that she’s never succeeded. 

“Try.” It’s self-destructive but he wants the memory, he wants to keep it in his mind forever, the time that Astrid Hofferson—Haddock—tried to pick him up. 

“Did it hurt?” She snorts, “when you fell from heaven?”

“You have to fit it to the situation.” He looks at her, rolls his eyes. “Like right now I’d say ‘hey girl’,” he reaches over towards her, resting his hand on the cushion beside her, “‘feel my shirt? That’s boyfriend material’.” 

She laughs, “that’s awful, I hate you.” 

“I’m just trying to set a mood.” 

“Are you a beaver, because dam!” She laughs at her own awful joke and he smiles. 

“Entirely wrong gender. I don’t need to teach you slang too, do I?” 

“Is your name Waldo? Because I looked all day to find you.”

He wants to laugh so hard it makes him cry and he wishes he could touch her. “If you were a fruit, you’d be a fineapple.” 

“Oh god, that’s almost good. I’m almost drunk enough to think that’s clever.” 

“You should drink more.” He wants to drink more but his buzz is fading and he wants to remember this more than he wants to forget it. He wants to have Astrid, on his couch, in his memory, his liquor loosening her into honesty. 

“I think I want to remember tonight,” she delivers it like it’s a line, staring at him like something is about to happen. 

“That’s actually good. You’ll have luck with that one, not needing to get drunk to sleep with them and all. Good sign.” He thinks of her using it on someone else, some guy who doesn’t know how lucky he is, and he feels almost sick. 

“I can’t help but think you sound serious,” she bats her eyelashes like she knows what she’s doing with them. She’s artful enough that he can pretend everything he loves about her is something she does on purpose, that it’s not pure Astrid radiating from her pores and making him lovesick. 

“Another good one, universally applicable: I’m always serious, baby, especially about you.” It sounds so fake, he hates it. He hates the way it used to work, hates that he spent so much thought and effort on women that weren’t her. 

“You’re going to make me pull out the big guns, aren’t you?” She stands, mock cracking her neck, running a hand through her hair and yanking her hair-tie from her ponytail and tossing her hair around. It’s supposed to be funny, he knows it is, but he hates everything about it, hates thinking about it being used, properly, on Astrid’s quest to get laid. She shouldn’t ever get laid, she should be loved. Adored. Worshiped. 

“Look at me, I deserve the biggest guns.” He shrugs and she laughs, that pure, crinkly eyed laugh. 

She takes a step and spins, plopping onto his lap with surprising grace. Maybe she’s not drunk. He doesn’t feel drunk, he feels everything about her, he feels her warm legs hooked across his thighs, her arms slung carelessly around his shoulders, her hair loose and tickling his chest, reminding him what a thin layer his tee shirt is between them. 

“Is this seat taken?” Her voice is lowered, husky to the point of joking. She leans in, her hair dangling over his face, her lips an inch or two from his. 

“Astrid,” he chokes through her name because he’s not supposed to know their name before he delivers a line, he’s not supposed to know them at all. “You make me want to have my cake and eat it too.” 

“That’s awful,” she laughs, and her breath smells like jager as she leans down and kisses him. Her lips barely glance across his, flirtatious, testing, like she’s waiting to be shocked. She pulls back just far enough to speak against his lips, “that’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard. Shut up. You’re horrible.” 

“I’m the best.”

“Yeah, you sort of are.” She kisses him again, her tongue sneaking into his mouth, her teeth scraping across his lower lip. She kisses like she does almost everything, aggressive, heartfelt, completely terrifying. He can’t help but be lost to it, at least for a minute, because he wants to remember this too, he wants to remember what her waist felt like under her hands, what her breath felt like puffing against his cheeks. 

It would hurt more to not know, to just assume her perfection instead of feeling it first-hand. Because even when she regrets this later, even when he’s demoted to the palate cleanser he doesn’t want to be, he’ll have this. 

“Is your dad gone for the night?” She whispers between kisses, knocking the hat off of his head and throwing it behind the couch. He knows what that question means, hell, his whole body knows what that question means and suddenly his pants are oppressively restrictive and his shirt feels like it’s weighing him down. He slides his hands down from her waist to the top of her jeans, brushing his thumb under her shirt across impossibly warm bare skin. She laughs, kissing across his jaw to his neck, “I’ll take that as a yes.”

She moves like she knows him, like she knows what he wants, and it occurs to her that she does and that he’s never had that before. He’s never done this with anyone that knew him the way Astrid knows him. Vulnerability has always been something he avoided but now it feels like the most important part, like the pivot point of everything between them. 

One of her hands slides up the side of his neck, twisting in his hair and tugging just hard enough to convince him that this isn’t really happening, that this isn’t a childhood pipedream. He thought he let go of this, that he acknowledged this wouldn’t ever happen, but it all comes rushing back in an instant, every eighth grade daydream, every torturous, overreaching thought he’s had the last few weeks. 

He can’t help but realize that making out with Astrid is like, already top five for any sex he’s had ever. And that’s saying something. 

She pulls back, grinning, her lips kiss-swollen and impossible, “this is great and all, but I’m getting a crick in my neck.” She runs her fingers through her hair and it’s affectionate, friendship bleeding into passion and making his blood run hot. “Think we could move to the bed?” 

And no matter how much he tried to be noble or how many times he actively stopped himself from thinking about this…well, when Astrid asks you to take her to bed and she’s smiling at you like this, all teeth and bruised lips and wild hair, you say thank you very much and do exactly what she’s wants. 

“You have to get off of me so I can get up.” 

“What? No throwing me over your shoulder in a show of manly strength?” 

“Not the first time, I don’t want to unrealistically raise your expectations.” He realizes after he said it that he made it sound like there would be a second time. He expects her to shut him down, to tell him this is just a one-time thing and she thought that he could keep things casual. 

She stands and he immediately misses her weight even though she’s offering him a hand and pulling him to his feet. 

“So what? I can expect a single grudging orgasm and to be ushered out the door before you go to sleep?” 

“Nah, I’m not trying to scare you off or anything.” He steps forward, rests his hands on her hips and she doesn’t stop him. She reaches for the hem of his shirt and starts dragging it upwards and he really wishes he’d worked out that morning, but it’s not his fault he was helping her with her kid and then drowning his misery. 

“I think that’d be pretty difficult,” she drags him towards the bedroom by his shirt, grinning at him like she’s been looking forward to eating him all day. “You haven’t managed it yet, anyway.” 

In the bedroom she reaches around him to shut the door, pressing him against it briefly to kiss him before yanking his shirt over his head in one slightly violent go, balling it up and tossing it back over her shoulder. She reaches for her own and he bats her hand away, glaring at her. 

“You don’t get to have all the fun.” 

“Who said I was having fun?” Her voice is light, teasing, competitive as she rests her hands on his shoulders, dragging them down his chest and urging him back towards the bed. 

Competitive. It’s never been competitive before, it’s always been a show, always been continuing some earlier performance. It was always more of an act than a connection but well…he’s been competitively connected to Astrid practically since before he can remember. 

“You look like you’re having fun.” He grabs the hem of her shirt and lifts it slowly, letting his fingertips drag across the impossibly warm skin of her stomach. She glares at him as he feels the goosebumps spread across her skin. “You know you love it.” 

“God, are you going to boast the whole time?” She scoffs, her cheeks pink, pupils dilated as he traces the bottom of her bra. 

“I don’t need to, baby.” He pulls off her shirt and her arm gets stuck, and he was supposed to be smooth but maybe that’s not how things work out with Astrid, maybe he’s never going to be smooth because how could he focus on himself when she’s there distracting him. 

She laughs when he gets her arm free, wrapping her arms around his neck and dragging him back onto the bed on top of her. She grunts, like he’s heavier than she’s used to and wraps her leg around him, keeping him caged like she expects that he’ll try and escape. 

Kissing Astrid never makes him feel like he’s doing something wrong. She’s welcoming and directing in equal parts, commanding the contact as she runs her hands up and down his back like she’s feeling him out, finding all his corners and edges and committing them to memory. His hand slides up her side to grip her chest, the smooth fabric of her bra frustratingly obstructive and he groans, kissing the side of her neck as he reaches around for the clasp. 

She starts laughing and the sound shatters his bubble of arousal. 

“What?” 

“No, I’m sorry,” she snorts, tugging at his hair until he’s facing her. She looks open like other girls never used to, eyes lit up as she runs her fingers across his shoulders, “I just thought it was funny that you were at second base. Because you’re a baseball player.” 

He doesn’t laugh. 

“You know—“

“I get the joke, Astrid, it’s just not funny.” He rests his head on her collarbone and it gives him an excellent view of her chest, lightly freckled golden skin stretching to the black cotton of her bra. He kisses the closest skin and she sighs, a happy sigh, her fingers curling in his hair and pressing him down.

She arches her back before he asks her too, shrugging out of her bra when he gets it unclasped. He tosses it off the side of the bed and it’s freeing, because he used to think about facilitating his date’s quick exit and he wants her to stay forever, especially braless and searching for it. She’s more beautiful than she has any right to be and he doubly regrets not working out this morning. 

He wants to tell her that she’s beautiful but he doesn’t know that he can, that it’s his place. He kisses her chest, dragging his tongue across her skin. She gasps, flexing into him, her fingernails digging into his shoulders. He kisses her nipple and she moans, the sound degrading slowly into a laugh. 

He lifts his head to look at her, “is it the second base thing?” 

“Don’t shortstop,” she smacks her forehead, “I mean stop short. Jesus, I’m sorry, I’m messing this up.” She tries to sit up but falters right before she bumps into his head, instead leaning back on her elbows. “I’m sorry, I just…do you know how weird this is?” 

That makes his heart sink, “because…because it’s me, isn’t it?” It’s not a question, not really. He knows it’s true, it’s that he’s Snotlout, just Snotlout. And she’s Astrid and realizing Hiccup is way better in bed. 

“No, no it’s not you,” she flops back and he can’t help but watch how her chest moves. She covers it with her arm, “it’s…you know you’re the second person I’ve ever done this with, right? And it feels so fucking personal and I’m…”

“You’re responding with baseball puns.” God she’s a dork, she’s the dorkiest dork to ever live. He wants to kiss her and realizes he can, even if it’s just now, even if it’s just for the next few minutes. 

She relaxes when he kisses her, hands dragging up and down his back, feeling him out. He pulls back and looks at her evenly, trying not to think about the fact that she’s only ever done this with the one person he’s struggled so hard to measure up against. What if this is where he really falls flat? 

“Has anyone ever told you that you talk too much?” He reaches for the button on her jeans, popping it free with one hand. She has the decency to look impressed, her eyes widening slightly. 

“No, I don’t normally get that.” 

“You talk too much,” he kisses her again, one hand rising to cup her breast, thumb flicking across her nipple. She moans into his mouth, her hips canting up towards his and he pulls away with a smile. “Relax.” 

“What, so it’s easy to steal home?” 

“Yes,” he kneels, tugging her jeans down to her knees and watching her kick them off. He drags her underwear off after and tries not to mentally trip over the fact that Astrid is naked in his bed, staring at him with wide, eager blue eyes like she expects him to do something. “Yes, make it easy.” 

“I’ve never made anything easy.” Her legs open wider around him and his heart feels like it’s going to beat out of his chest. 

“Shut up.” 

“Ok.” She says it like a promise, dragging him down to kiss him, her legs winding around his waist. “Ok, I’m shutting up.” 

“Doesn’t sound like it.”

“Fuck you.” 

That’s the point. He thinks it, because she wants to have the last word and if he lets her maybe they can move on. Maybe he can help her get over that post-Hiccup hump. He kisses the center of her chest, his hand tracing a line up her inner thigh. She tightens her fingers on his shoulders like she’s bracing herself for another geological shift in her world. 

When he touches her she jolts, her legs tightening around his waist. He wonders briefly how fingers could feel so different between people, how he could be doing anything different. Before he can ask if it’s alright, she groans, arching against the bed as his fingers slide against her. She gasps and pulls him up towards her, kissing him when she can. It’s not something he’s used to, to say the least, the personal contact of it. It’s like he’s not famous, he’s not a conquest, he’s not a story to tell her friends.

She wants him to do this because he’s Snotlout and that’s terrifying.

She moans when his finger slips inside of her, a breathy, out of control sort of sound that makes him all the more aware of the tightness of his pants. He should have taken them off. He can’t even think about himself when she’s taut underneath him, waiting for him to make this something.

She’s slick, distractingly so, and he slides his finger inside of her, biting his lip at the tight heat of her. He can’t help but think what it would be like to be inside, can’t help but mentally replace his finger with his dick and imagine. His thumb stretches to find her clit, pressing until she bucks against the touch and then rubbing in tight circles. 

It’s different but the same. The same because the same motions and the same cues mean the same thing, but different because it’s Astrid, because he cares, because he wants so deeply for it to be good. She drags him into another kiss, passion clumsy and wet, moaning into his mouth as his thumb drags across her clit, his fingers thrusting in and out of her. 

He can’t help but grind up a bit, into her hip, trying to relieve the pressure in his own pants and focus on her. It’s like being in college again, inexperienced and eager. It’s heady in a way it’s not supposed to be, and maybe it’s how long it’s been, maybe it’s the fact that it’s Astrid, but he feels like he could explode. 

“Oh God, Snot,” she whimpers, kissing his cheek, her hand leaving his back to grab a fistful of sheets. He can’t remember the last time anyone said his name like that, high pitched and full of tension. Normally it was Jorgenson, to be honest. It was because he was famous, because he was number fifteen. “Don’t stop,” she kisses his shoulder, lips damp and slack against his skin. 

Her whole spine snaps taut before he can say anything, her body rigid against his. She cries out, softly, like she’s afraid of someone hearing and he hooks his fingers hoping to make her louder. Hoping to make her forget where she is or who she’s with. She shudders, biting her lip and dragging him down for another kiss. 

It’s slow, lazy, satisfied, and his pants feel tighter, more restrictive. 

“Ladies first,” he mumbles against her cheek. 

“I thought we were supposed to shut up.” She sounds tired, sated and eager all at once as she stretches, her legs falling from their secure hold around his waist. 

“You were supposed to shut up, I never said anything but me.” 

“Take off your pants,” she laughs, grabbing his ass through his jeans briefly before pushing him to his knees. “And grab a condom, please tell me you have condoms.” 

“Of course I have condoms.” A new, unopened box in his bedside drawer that he bought in a fit of false hope when he first moved back to Berk.

“Then get on it, seriously. Now.” 

“You’re so needy.” He stands, fiddling with is belt for a moment before unbuttoning his pants and shoving them down along with his boxers in one fell swoop. She looks him up and down, analytical enough for him to want to cover up, before smiling and relaxing back onto the bed, eyes on him as he steps out of his pants and walks to the bedside table. If she sees him open the box she doesn’t say anything, her hand lazily trailing down her own front, stroking at the skin beneath her navel. 

She holds a hand out and he tosses the foil packet to her, watching too intently as she rips it open, holding the rubber circle between her thumb and forefinger. She sits up, propping herself up on her free hand and gesturing him closer. 

It’s weird to have someone else offer to do it, to be honest, because it’s always been something he did almost furtively. The fact is there are a lot of crazy people in the world who would see intimacy as a possibly way to get at his money, whether suing him for picking up something they probably gave him or bringing some kid into the mix that he’d have to pay for. But Astrid reaches for him eagerly, hand holding the condom resting on his hip while her other hand wraps around the base of him and strokes slowly. 

He groans and she laughs, a bright, relieved laugh like she wasn’t sure that would work how it was supposed to. She scoots closer to the edge of the bed, legs dangling off of the side as her hand tightens and twists as it drags along him. She kisses his stomach, fingernails digging slightly into his hip. 

“How do you want to do this?” Her lips drag across his skin as she talks and her thumb flicks across him just right. He shudders, bracing his hands on her shoulders. 

“Now.” To be completely honest, this is almost embarrassing. And he’s never embarrassed himself in bed, not really. Sure, some times didn’t last as long as he’d like them to, but he was usually drunk after a win and nothing can be embarrassing when you just kicked ass like that. But now? Now he feels like a kid, feeling like he’s going to bust apart at the seams from her hand on him. 

“That’s a time and doesn’t really answer my question.” She licks a line down from his belly button and his breath catches in his throat. 

“If you don’t stop that it will.” 

She pulls away and looks up at him, eyes bright, “careful, that almost sounds like a compliment.” She does stop though, adjusting her grip and rolling on the condom with a practiced hand. “Come here.” She lays back, dragging him with her almost too enthusiastically and their heads almost smack together. 

“Real graceful, Astrid.” He shifts slightly, holding his weight on his elbows. She kisses him, long and slow and intimate in a way he doesn’t think he ever truly understood before. His length drags across the cleft of her hip and she reaches down to line him up. 

“I try.” One of her legs hooks over his hip and he pushes forward slowly, watching her face. Her eyes widen slightly, she exhales, she presses on his lower back with her heel. She feels too good and he’s too amped up and he tries to count her eyelashes instead of noticing his own racing pulse. “Come on, I’m not going to break.” 

“Are you ever going to stop heckling me?” He pulls out halfway and presses back in and it feels impossibly better. Her back arches off the bed slightly, hips moving with his. Because she can’t just let him do it, she has to help, has to make it some intolerably wonderful group effort. 

“Never.” Her breath catches as he thrust a little harder, and he does it again, watching her eyes flutter closed. He likes the idea too much, that this doesn’t ever have to stop, that there’s some magical solution to an impossible problem where this can happen again and again. 

She’s bossy in a way he should have expected, a constant murmured stream of ‘faster’ and ‘harder’ and ‘just like that’ filling the space between breathy moans and the wet sound of skin on skin. It’s constantly almost too much, the sweet pressure around him and the hands on his back, pulling him into long, clumsy kisses. 

When his elbow first cramps it’s easy to ignore, because everything else is going fucking great, literally, but his arm starts to shake and his rhythm falters. It’s more out of practicality than an attempted move when he slips his good arm under her shoulders and rolls, pulling her onto his chest. She sits up, legs straddling his hips as she braces her hand on his chest. 

“Did you just…did you just fucking roll us over?” 

“Yeah, my arm was cramping,” he rests his hands on her hips, shifting to get comfortable, “I figured if you were going to be so bossy, you could do some of the work.” 

“That wasn’t even hard for you,” she sounds halfway angry as she rolls her hips against his, leaning down to kiss him. “That’s hotter than it should be.” 

“Yeah?” He smiles too wide and she kisses him anyway, grinding down against him and moaning into his mouth. 

“Shut up. You don’t have to be so smug about it.” She whimpers, catching his lower lip between her teeth as she moves just right, “God, that feels good.” 

“You’re the one who can’t shut up.” He reaches one hand between them and finds her clit. She cries out, moving faster, her legs shaking slightly. 

It’s over too quickly after that, Astrid finishing first with a cry, fingernails digging into his chest. She kisses the side of his neck, rocks her hips against him and whispers into his skin, “come on, I can feel how close you are,” and it’s enough and too much all at once. 

She collapses onto his chest for a second before rolling off of him and he’s suddenly cold, his sweat drying rapidly in the cool air of the room. She hums, fumbling for his hand and squeezing it. 

“I’d say you hit that one out of the park.” 

“I hate you,” he laughs, sitting up and taking the condom off, tying it and wrapping it in a tissue before throwing it away. It feels like habit when this is anything but habitual, anything but regular. 

“Home run, rookie, I think you’ve got a future on this team.” 

He lays back down on the bed, a foot away from her because he’s not sure if he’s still allowed to touch and she rolls towards him, pressing herself against his side, cheek on his shoulder. She slings her leg over his legs, sighing and getting comfortable. He’s never really been a cuddler before but it’s nice, warm, some of the closeness of a few minutes ago preserved. He strokes her arm, more of a tickle than an actual touch, and she hums contentedly. 

He hates to ask, but he doesn’t think he can hold it in any longer, “you don’t regret it?” 

“I think…I honestly think I’d feel better if I did regret it,” she laughs, fumbling for some sort of blanket and tugging a corner of the comforter over herself. He wants to tell her to get under the covers but he also doesn’t want to move. “But it felt really right.” 

“Not exactly the rave reviews I’m used to,” he shrugs, flushing when she nuzzles the side of his neck. “It’s usually more ‘Oh God, Snotlout, again’.” 

She props herself above him on an elbow, leaning down to kiss him again, “Oh God, Snotlout, again.”


	15. Chapter 15

Astrid wakes up slowly, somehow fully aware of where she is and who she’s with. She’s laying horizontally on the bed and Snotlout is curled up behind her, arm around her waist and face pressed against her back. It feels like he’s drooling and she smiles even though that’s kind of gross.

She’s sore in that happy way but feels grimy, all of last night’s sweat dried on her skin and making it feel tight. They talked about showering last night but ultimately it was too much effort, they were too comfortable and too tired and getting out of bed was too much of a pain in the ass. 

So they talked. They talked until they could barely keep their eyes open about everything and nothing. He told her stories about his career, about crazy fans and pranking teammates and coaches who didn’t like him that he had to prove wrong. She told him about New York and her daughter and he dozed off first, laying entirely the wrong direction amid messy sheets. 

Last night as a whole was entirely different than what she could have expected. Snotlout was…well, he was really good in bed. And not in the hyper-methodical, playboy way she’d reasoned he would be, it wasn’t the kind of good that came from practice alone. Instead there was an innate sort of attentiveness to it, like…like they’d done it before. 

She can’t help but feel like it didn’t feel like the beginning of a relationship or the end of a friendship, it was the middle of something. It was a transition, sure, but relatively unremarkable, considering how good the sex was. 

Sex with Hiccup was like playing chess with a grandmaster. Yeah, it was good, but she can’t say it was ever really fun. It was scientific, for him, like she was a machine and he needed to figure out every nook and cranny and what it did and sometimes it felt like emotion and sensation were lost to the process. But it was different with Snotlout, less organized, more earnest. His motions were methodical in a way that told her he’d done it a hundred times, but he was constantly looking at her, waiting for response. 

And ok, she didn’t know it was a thing, to be completely honest, and it doesn’t seem like a thing she’d be into but…being manhandled was sort of hot. Really hot, actually. It makes her think of a million things and places and activities that never made sense before. It makes her think in general and that in and of itself is exciting. She hasn’t thought about sex in a long time, independent of when it was actually happening. It makes her want to plan, it makes her want to ask for things and even better, she feels like she has half a chance at getting them. 

He snores behind her, his grip on her waist tightening, and she reaches down to touch his forearm. Before she touches him she’s still half expecting to touch Hiccup, for the last two months to be some strange dream, but it’s distinctly Snotlout. Broader, stockier, more solid. 

She likes the idea of being the one being grounded after a decade failing at tethering someone else to the earth. Snotlout is the unmovable object and maybe she can learn to be the unstoppable force again. 

“Shit,” he suddenly sits bolt upright, scrambling from under the sheets and looking at the clock, “I’m supposed to be at the park in ten minutes.” 

“What?” 

“Little league. Last game of the season,” his foot gets tangled when he scrambles out of the sheets and he almost falls, catching himself at the last minute and picking up his jeans. He blinks at her, like he’s just now realizing that she’s there, “oh. Shit. Good morning. Fuck.”

“Morning,” she sits up, scratching her head. Maybe she was more asleep than she thought. This whole situation is discombobulating and to be completely honest his nudity is distracting. He lowers the pants he’s holding slightly, giving her an eyeful and grinning smugly.

“Morning,” he flexes, posing even now, “so last night was fun.” 

She flushes like a teenager, rolling out of bed and searching for her underwear, “ten minutes until the last game of the season, you said?” 

“Shit, you’re right.” He’s all business again, stepping into his jeans commando just to torture her and digging through his closet for his Berk Ballerinas shirt. “Fuck, I’m never going to get another job if I’m late.” He says it under his breath, a handful of other shirts falling off their hangers. 

“Hey,” she walks up behind him and hugs him, ducking down to rest her chin on his shoulder, “we’ll make it, it’s close and those things never start on time.” 

He exhales, “I can totally feel your boobs on my back right now, oh my god.” 

“You’re a fucking moron,” she smacks the side of his head, grabbing her bra from the handle of the closet door. 

It takes them three minutes to get decent and stumble to Astrid’s car. She forgets her phone at his house and his socks don’t match, but they make it to the park at 9:02, and the referee isn’t even on the field yet. Finn is surrounded by a group of children, apparently acting as temporary coach, and he looks away from Astrid in all-knowing politeness as she and Snotlout stumble out of the car. 

She adjusts her ponytail. She probably looks like an absolute mess. 

“Ok guys—and girl, sorry Ayla,” Snotlout jogs to the group of children, holding his hands out for high-fives, “if we play just like we have in practice we’re going to whoop all their a—butts, alright? I know we can do this, Ayla, you’re up first, give us a lead, girl.” 

The kids follow him like a small army and Finn nods at Astrid before pointing over his shoulder at Hiccup, sitting in the first row of the bleachers, looking everywhere but at her.

Right. 

She should go deal with that. 

She sits down next to him, a foot away, and Ayla hits the first pitch across the field, running to second base and getting an excited thumbs up from Snotlout on the sidelines. Snot is either oblivious or smarter than she thought because he doesn’t turn around, doesn’t give her the unwanted pressure of searching looks or offers to help. It’s like he knows she doesn’t want help, she just wants him to be there to help her rebuild. 

“So.” Hiccup starts, hands tucked into his pockets. He’s wearing the same clothes that he was last night, like he didn’t pack any extras. She could think of it as passion, as him leaving in a moment of sudden decision, but she sees it for what it is: he just didn’t think it would take that long to convince her. “I signed the papers.” 

“Thanks.” 

“Snotlout, Astrid? Really?” He sounds disgusted, hurt, vulnerable. She can’t remember the last time he was vulnerable but she’s happy for him. Maybe he can be a person again instead of a success machine. 

“He grew up. So did I. So did you,” she looks at her hands, “the difference is we grew apart.” 

“And you two grew together? Is there some doping scandal in your past I don’t know about?” 

“Yeah, the one where I injected myself with compliance and silence to try and coax you to stick around,” she wipes her hand over her face, waves to Ayla as she runs around back home. Snotlout gives her a high five and a fist bump and she goes to sit on the bench, grinning widely. “Look, Hiccup, I’m not mad anymore. I’m just done.”

“What if I’m not done?” He says it like a challenge more than a question, like he’s goading her honor to stay on board a sinking ship. 

“You were done when you left. I said I’d leave and you left anyway.” 

“It was for my job, Astrid, you never had a problem with my job—”

“I always had a problem with your job,” she wrinkles her nose, “you never cared that I had a problem with it.” 

“I care now.” 

“I don’t have a problem anymore,” she sighs, “it makes this all easier, you know. I keep Ayla when you’re out of town, you can travel as much as you want and have her when you’re at home. I won’t fight you on that, you’re a great father.” 

“But you’ll fight me on everything else?” 

“What is everything else? You get the apartment, your money, all our things, I just want out.” 

“And I want you,” he rests his hand on hers, “even though you went and slept with Snotlout to get back at me—”

“You do know that some things have nothing to do with you, right? That you aren’t the center of the goddamned universe?” 

“I used to be the center of your universe.” 

“Yeah, and I was never the center of yours,” she sighs, because it’s sad even though she doesn’t want to care anymore, “you should go find someone who is.” 

“Like you found Snotlout?” He says it like an insult. 

Looking at Snotlout, offering her daughter Gatorade, she can’t help but think she doesn’t mind being insulted. 

“Grow up, Hiccup.” 

He’s quiet for a long time and she notices for the first time that he looks older, more tired, life-worn in a way she isn’t. She knows he tries and she doesn’t hate him for it, she doesn’t hate him at all. She just hates that she was never a priority, not really. 

“It’s not that I don’t understand,” she says more gently, patting him on the shoulder. Snotlout is looking now, not so furtive glances over his shoulder every few moments. “I’m proud of you, and I love you, I just…I want to be happy, alright? I don’t see this as a failure, it’s a success that ran its course and ended and we have Ayla and she’s perfect and I want to work with you but…but I get to be me now, alright? I’m not Hiccup’s wife anymore, I’m Astrid.” 

“They used to be the same thing.” He’s not pleading anymore. He’s still confused, yes, but no longer trying to win. “Right? They were the same thing? We used to be happy, right?”

“We used to be ecstatic,” she nods, waving at Snotlout this time, telling him don’t worry about it, I’ve got this. He believes her and turns back to the game. “I don’t think it was anyone’s fault.” 

“I don’t understand how you’ll fight anything but you won’t fight this.” 

“I don’t know what I’d be winning,” she smiles, a wry, ironic smile that doesn’t feel like her. “We changed and that’s alright. That’s just human.” 

“I think you’re wrong.”

“But you signed the papers.”

He rubs his hand over his head, “I…for a minute I thought that you had the right to be wrong. That I should let you suffer with it.” 

“Then let me.” 

“You think you’ll suffer?” He doesn’t look exactly happy with the idea and she shakes her head. 

“I think I’ll figure it out.” 

“Can I bring Ayla home with me?” He looks concerned, like it’s a test and Astrid sits up straight. 

“Well, we have to talk about where she’ll go to school. If you’re going to be gone as much as you have been, I think it should be here at least for now, but I guess…it might make sense for you to take Thanksgiving. Then maybe you could have Christmas with all of us, see Gobber for a while.” 

He nods, lips pursed, “I don’t see Gobber enough. Maybe…maybe that would work.” 

“Ok.” 

“I still think…I still think I should take her for the weekend, we haven’t seen each other and—”

“I’m not going to make you beg, Hiccup, I’d never do that.” 

“You’re so reasonable.” He laughs, wiping his eyes, watching Ayla hit a home run in the second, tiny, little league inning. “When did that happen?” 

“I don’t know,” she nudges his shoulder with hers and thinks that maybe, someday they could be friends. “But it did.” 

“Snotlout though? Really?” 

“You don’t know him, Hiccup,” she sighs, “I don’t think you ever did.” 

“I didn’t think I needed to.” He nods, “maybe I was wrong.” 

It’s the first time Astrid has heard him admit fault. It feels good, satisfying. Like an ending. 

The game passes too slowly, the other team putting up a fight but not enough of one, and the Berk Ballerinas win 10 to 9 during a short overtime inning. Ayla runs over and Hiccup tells her they’re going to New York for the weekend and Astrid is thrilled, because she cares more about being a good parent than she does about spurning Hiccup. She hugs Ayla goodbye and Hiccup promises to call when they land. She claps him on the back and he hugs her, a platonic, too tight hug that makes her worry about him, but he lets go and walks away, head held high. 

When Astrid finishes waving goodbye she sees Snotlout, hanging back, arms crossed, looking irritated and vulnerable all at once. She walks over to him, hands in her pockets. 

“You and Hiccup looked pretty close.” 

“We had some stuff to talk about,” she steps towards him, “he’s taking Ayla back to New York for the weekend.” 

“Yeah?” He shrugs, puffs himself out, and he looks so much like he used to that she wonders how much of his life he’s spent expecting disappointment. 

“Yeah, so why don’t we go somewhere private and talk.” She wants to hug him, to let him know that last night was right and good and exactly what she wanted but it feels wrong, because they’re in public, because she’s staring at her like she’s a threat to his happiness. 

“About what, Astrid?”

“About last night,” she rolls her eyes, “about how it was great and I’d really like it to happen again, maybe next time after dinner and long, boring talks about our feelings.” 

“And then what?” He’s actually asking her, like he doesn’t know where this is going and she smiles, leaning down to kiss him gently, slowly, like she’s scared of spooking him. 

“And then we talk about pet names, are you going to call me sweetie? Pumpkin? Baby?”

He grins, “we do need to talk, those pet names are all so lame.” 

“I can’t wait to hear what you think is better,” she grins, reaching for his hand. “Where are we going?” 

“Back to my place?” He offers, “I don’t think your uncle needs to hear the discussions.” He waggles his eyebrows and it makes her laugh. A real laugh, a weightless, happy laugh that she hasn’t felt in so long. 

“Alright, your place.” 

“I hope you keep being this agreeable, I think I’ll like my girlfriend to agree with me.” 

“Then you better keep looking, Snot.” She squeezes his hand and he snorts. 

“Nah, I think I’m good right here.”


End file.
